Last night, the New York Yankees made history by defeating the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 6 of the World Series to capture their record 27th World Championship.  It is the Yankees’ first championship in nine years.  The significance of the Yankees’ victory cannot be overstated.  With their 27th championship, the Yankees have reaffirmed their place as the most dominant franchise in professional sports.  More importantly, the Yankees have destroyed the curse of Hillary Clinton.

On October 26, 2000, the New York Yankees were on top of the world.  They had just defeated a cute little team from the outer boroughs, the New York Mets, in Game 5 of the World Series to win what was then a record 26th World Championship.  It was the Yankees’ third championship in a row and their fourth in five years.  The Yankees were unstoppable.   Twelve days later, it would all fall apart.

On November 7, 2000, the voters of New York committed an act of barely speakable evil when they elected former First Lady Hillary Clinton as one of their United States Senators.  The voters’ decision was curious because Mrs. Clinton was not a New Yorker at all, but rather an Illinois native by way of Arkansas.  A communist witch and lifelong Cubs fan, Clinton had toured the state throughout her campaign pretending to be a moderate and a Yankees fan.  At the time, it was hard to believe that anyone could fall for Clinton’s brand of dark magic.  After all, her liberalism and loyalty to the Cubs were no secret.  But the voters who elected her were New Yorkers; they couldn’t help themselves.  The witch won, but not without a price to those who love the Yankees.  Although winning world championships was easy for the Yankees before Hillary became the Senator from New York, the most storied franchise in sports would never win another while Hillary served in the Senate.  That’s because she cursed the Yankees.

The Yankees reached the World Series in 2001.  With the city’s psyche still reeling after the September 11 terrorist attack man-made disaster, the Yankees delighted their fans with multiple dramatic, come-from-behind victories.  However, it wasn’t to be.  When the World Series was over, the Yankees had nothing to show for their dramatic effort except a loss.  It was like they were the Red Sox. Which happened to be the Yankees defeated in the 2003 American League Championship Series when Aaron Boone hit that memorable home run into the left field stands to start the bottom of the eleventh in Game 7.  Once again, the Yankees fell short in the World Series, this time to the Florida Marlins.  By this time, it was clear that Hillary’s curse was quite powerful.   But the disappointment of 2003 would pale in comparison to what was to come.

The 2004 regular season ended as most do, with the Yankees defeating the Red Sox to win the AL East.  The first round of the playoffs went as expected, with the Yankees defeating the Minnesota Twins in the ALDS.  As did Game One of the ALCS against the Red Sox.  As did Game Two of he ALCS against he Red Sox.  As did Game 3 of the ALCS against the Red Sox.  All was going as expected, but Hillary Clinton’s dark magic is powerful.  After taking a 3-0 lead against the Red Sox, the Yankees lost four straight to their rivals.  It was unthinkable.  The once-powerful Yankees lost . . . TO THE RED SOX . . . IN THE PLAYOFFS.  Remarkably, the Red Sox went on to win the World Series for the first time since the Woodrow Wilson administration.  The Red Sox would win another title in 2007.

Before Hillary’s term as Senator, the Yankees were the most dominant team in all of baseball.  Once the witch was seated, the Yankees never won another title while the most cursed franchise in sports won two.  Earlier this year, Hillary resigned as Senator from New York.  Now that the witch left New York, the Yankees are World Champions.  Baseball is back to normal.  The curse is broken!

The media is focusing on NY-23, as well they should, as Conservatives put a lot of emphasis on that race.  Conservatives essentially ousted an establishment-backed liberal Republican (not even a moderate, but a liberal who supported ObamaCare and Cap-and-Trade) in Dede Scozzofava, and backed Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman, who lost the race by under 3,000 votes.  Yet the Hoffman-Owens-Scozzofava race should be viewed as a victory for Conservatives, and should provide a lesson to both the GOP establishment and the Conservative/Tea Party movement.  NY-23 taught us two things: the GOP cannot win without Conservatives, and Conservatives cannot win without the GOP.  We live in a two-party system, and need to work within that two-party system.  There may come a day when a third party is necessary and viable, but we are not there yet.  At the same time, the GOP establishment cannot simply nominate any liberal they see fit and expect Conservative backing.  NY-23 was important in that it sent a message that we will not tolerate establishment-appointed candidates when there are viable Conservative alternatives.

The Tea Party movement helped to take a third-party candidate who was in single-digits in the polls a month ago, and bring him to within a few percentage points in a volatile political environment.  Conservatives took down a liberal, and sent a message that should revurberate into 2010, and that is a victory (I’ve said from the beginning that Hoffman did not have to win in order for this to be a victory for Conservatives).  On the flip side, we need to use NY-23 to change the party, not separate ourselves from it.  Hoffman did not win for a variety of reasons, but one of them probably was the fact that he wasn’t a Republican.  Scozzofava, who dropped out of the race, had enough votes last night to potentially put Hoffman over the top.  Conservative third party candidacies will always split the vote with other Republicans, and make electoral losers out of us.  Going forward, Conservatives should look to back other Conservatives in the primaries, and support moderate Republicans in genearal when there is no viable conservative candidate.  Electability needs to fit into the calculus of who we support, but not at the expense of principles.

Stepping outside of NY-23, it was a banner day for the Republican Party.  Declared irrelevant and a dying party after 2008, the GOP channeled 1993 by winning both Governorships in deep blue New Jersey and what has been described as increasingly purple Virginia.  In fact, the GOP swept all statewide races in Virginia, including adding 7 seats to its majority in the House of Delegates, confirming reports of the GOP’s demise as premature.  The media is now trying to spin these losses for the Democrats as not meaning all that much in terms of Obama’s popularity, but it’s not working.  Indeed, Obama is an increasingly unpopular President, with only a 46% approval rating (with 53% disapproval) on Election Day.  These races were a shot across the bow, both to the GOP establishment and to the Democrats.  Small government conservatism is on the rise, and was expressed by the voters in two states last night.  Bring on 2010.

Dede Scozzofava is the poster child for the RINO problem that has infiltrated our party.  The pattern is predictable.  The Republican establishment props up and supports a RINO candidate against a Conservative candidate who stands a chance of winning.  The Conservative base makes noise and is told to shut up and support the Republican candidate because an R is better than a D, and in this particular state/district, only “moderates” win.  Then, at the end of the day, the “moderate” candidate somehow ends up losing, or falling far behind and flat on their face.  What does the “moderate” do?  Are they good GOP soldiers that then get behind and support the GOP candidate?  No, they typically end up selling out to the other side.  Let’s look at the case history:

• Sen. Jim Jeffords: Jeffords didn’t face a tough primary challenge, but started the trend of RINOs bolting the GOP when he pouted and left the party to caucus with the Democrats as an independent when the GOP wouldn’t support one of his pet pieces of legislation.
• Sen. Lincoln Chaffee (RINO-RI): Propped up by the NRSC, Chaffee ran a tough primary campaign against the fairly conservative Steve Laffey, and barely won.  He then went on to lose the general election to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).  Within a year, Chaffee had announced that he was leaving the GOP to become an independent, and put his support behind Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election.
• Sen. Benedict Arlen Specter (Former RINO-PA, now D-PA): Specter is the worst of the mix.  He was facing a tough primary primary challenge in Pat Toomey, despite being backed financially by the NRSC.  Specter made a political decision in March of 2009, at the height of Obama’s popularity, that he would likely lose as a Republican and faced a better chance as a Democrat, so he switched sides without a thought.  It shows what Specter was really made of in that during the health care debate, he advocated for a single-payer system, a system he opposed vigorously back in the 1990s.  His defection showed that he was truly about serving his own self-interests rather than any principle or sense of party loyalty.
• Dede Scozzofava (RINO-NY): Scozzofava is just the latest example of RINOs gone bad.  Appointed by party insiders to run and backed by both Newt Gingrich and the NRCC because “she is the only Republican who can win”, her records was more liberal than the that of Bill Owens, the real Democrat in the race.  After the Conservative backlash that threw support behind Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman, dropped out of the race this past Saturday.  She then proceeded to endorse the Owens rather than Hoffman, proving that the loyalty given to her by the NRCC and Gingrich was highly misplaced.  Now, Hoffman stands a very good shot (PDF) at winning NY-23, proving that a Conservative can win in a purple district in New York.

When will the GOP establishment learn that propping up these so-called “moderates” against viable conservatives is not acceptable to the base, and is foolhardy?  Rush has called moderates “squishy”, which is evinced by the fact that they seem to switch parties on the whim.  In reality, these so-called “moderates” are not moderate at all, but rather liberals.  I have no qualms about the fact that some politicians who are not true conservatives will need to run in deep blue and even some purple districts, but there needs to be some semblance of fiscal conservatism there and philosophy of limited government.

For example, Rudy Giuliani is an example of a moderate that I would support in a statewide race in New York (if I still lived there) or in a New York congressional district.  He may be liberal on social issues, and I’d never support him to be President, but as a New York Governor, Senator, or Congressman, he’d be acceptable because he is a principled person, and supports many of the other Conservative principles that I and others hold dear.  He is a major fiscal conservative and almost libertarian in some of his  leanings, making him someone who could be counted on in the fights against the stimulus, health care, cap-and-trade, and card check.

While in a perfect world, I’d love a fiscally conservative, socially conservative, and strong on national defense candidate in every race, I know that’s not plausible.  I also know that when there are no other alternatives, sometimes it makes sense to vote the RINOs in just for head count purposes.  But when there is a viable Conservative alternative, and the RINO in question doesn’t espouse ANY conservatism (as in the case of Scozzofava, Chaffee, etc.), then the Republican establishment should either support the Conservative, or back off and let the primaries unfold without their interference.

After NY-23, the next RINO test will be in Florida.  With Gov. Charlie Crist (RINO-FL) running as the NRSC supported candidate against former FL Speaker of the House and Conservative Marco Rubio (R-FL) in the primaries, we’ll see the same story repeated over again.  The Tea Party activists will be emboldened by their success in NY-23 and turn their sights to Florida.  Will the GOP establishment learn its lesson from Scozzofava, or will they continue to push Charlie Crist, the man who embraced Obama over the stimulus, proposed a cap-and-trade scheme equally as radical as that proposed by the Democrat congress, and who refused to balance the budget in Florida.  I’d hope they’d learn their lesson, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

A new ad in the NY-23 congressional race was put out as a conservative group, made to appear as a pro-Scozzofava ad, detailing her liberal positions on the stimulus, gay marriage, and card check.  The ad labels her the “choice for progressives” in hopes of dissuading Republicans from voting for her:

Politico calls it an underhanded dirty trick.  Ace thinks it’s effective if not a little disingenuous.  I don’t see what the big deal is.  The ad is factual and truthful in every respect.  It doesn’t make anything up, and says what many of us have been saying.  Dede Scozzofava is the choice for Progressives, so much so that she was endorsed by Markos Moulitsas of DailyKOS fame.  So how is this underhanded?  If they had done the same thing from a Conservative perspective, they would have been accused of an attack ad?  Frankly, I think it’s a clever, effective ad that does nothing but tell the truth.  What’s disingenuous and underhanded is Dede Scozzofava trying to portray herself as a conservative.

Any chance I get to wreck on the Millennial Generation (depending on who you speak to, it’s those born between 1982 and 1999), is a chance that I’m going to take.  I don’t loathe them, but since I’ve been teaching them for nine years I know that not only are they one day going to be the future of this country, they also need a LOT of help getting there!  So I use my Gen X cynicism (and clarity) to call them out before it’s too late.

So, in that spirit I love what Glenn Beck did the other night on his show!  He called them out in a beautifully clear kind of way:

“Everyone gets a trophy!  Everybody wins!” Did anyone think about what a narcissistic bunch of whiny helpless brats we were bringing up?  How in the process of taking pain away from our kids, being their best friends, throwing “stuff” at them and calling it “raising our kids” we took a piece of their souls away — the part that copes with the reality of pain?  It’s sad to watch how helpless some Millennials are when faced with hardship, then to think that one day they’re going to eventually govern this nation.  Beck is right on with his warning.

Just so you know, I proudly grade tests and papers in red ink — and I’m not about to stop!

This one baffles me.  Former Vice-President Dick Cheney is backing Kay Bailey Hutchison over Conservative Rick Perry in the race for Governor of the State of Texas.  Now, I won’t go so far as to call Hutchison a RINO.  She is a moderate conservative in my view, and nowhere near the RINO status of a Lincoln Chaffee or Susan Collins.  That being said, she is a moderate conservative and Gov. Perry is definitely a conservative.  I am not sure what usual argument prevails here to support Hutchison over Perry.  He is a Conservative Governor who is popular, who can obviously win, and is an incumbent.  Cheney is usually pretty right on the nose when it comes to conservatism, so I wonder if this is more personal (as in a favor owed or a personal friendship).  In any case, it is puzzling.

H/T: The Patriot Room

I like Newt.  I think he has played a vital role in the advancement of Conservatism over the years, and continues to be a vital voice in the Republican Party and Conservative movement.  I also am not that upset that he sided with Dede Scozzafava in the election.  We as Conservatives have to realize that there are differences of opinion on occasion at the best approach to the end result of achieving limited government.  I think Newt is being a little short-sighted in this matter, as he does not see the buildup of frustration among Conservatives at the way the GOP has treated Conservatives.  Had the NRSC stayed out of the races in Florida and California (and Pennsylvania before Benedict Arlen switched sides), Conservatives may not have gotten so riled up about NY-23. Yet here we are, with a good, solid Conservative running under the Conservative party ticket, who would rather have run as a Republican, but was  denied the chance.

To be fair, Newt endorsed Scozzafava before all of the attention was brought to that race, so he is in somewhat of a hard spot at this point.  In his rush to defend his position, however, he has disparaged Conservatives who support Doug Hoffman and has made some rather unfortunate attacks on Hoffman himself, including one that is the height of hypocrisy for Gingrich, that Hoffman is a carpetbagger.  Now, New York law allows someone from outside the district to run in the district.  To be fair, Hoffman was once part of NY-23 before it was recently redistricted.  He is from NY-23 but his current residence is a few miles outside the boarders, and he has pledged to move into the district should he win.  Where this becomes hypocritical is that Newt himself ran for a district in which he did not live in back in 1992.

People are lashing back at Newt, some harsher than others.  To me, the best and most measured response came from former Sen. Fred Thompson, who sums up beautifully what many of us in the Conservative movement are thinking:

Newt said that our support for Hoffman was a ‘purge,’ was ‘misguided,’ was—we were applying a litmus test that said if you’re not 100 percent with us than you’re not with us at all.   And that Scozzafava was more in step with her district and therefore we shouldn’t substitute our judgment for the party elders of the district.  Are we saying that as Americans you’ve got to have an ‘R’ by your name before you vote for them?  Where do you draw the line?  If somebody with a record like this gets our seal of approval, regardless, only because she’s got an ‘R’ by the name… You know, just because we’re Republicans doesn’t mean that we’re deaf, dumb, and blind.

Newt should continue to be looked at as a major influence of American Conservatism, and play an important role in the debate.  I think that this incident, however, has ruined his chances of winning a primary in 2012.  Gingrich thumbed his nose at the base, was disingenuous with his accusations against Hoffman, and has become almost too willing to compromise and work with those who seek to undermine the founding principles of this nation.  It’s a tragedy that a once great leader of the movement has turned in this direction.

H/T: Michelle Malkin

Sen. Jim DeMint recently penned an essay posted on his Senate website on the subject of term limits.  DeMint is planning to introduce a Constitutional amendment to impose term limits of two 6-year terms for Senators and three 2-year terms for Congressman.  In his short essay, DeMint talks about why term limits are needed and what has happened to Washington, DC to necessitate them:

One of the more unfortunate things I’ve come to realize is that Congress has the power to corrupt even those with the most honorable intentions. Too often, I‘ve seen good, honest citizen legislators come to Washington only to realize that in Congress, you either conform to the system or find yourself on the outside looking in. As a result, the American people are left with more “career politicians” who go along to get along in Congress, and end up beholden to special interests, lobbyists, and big government policies.

I used to be somewhat against term limits when I was younger, idealistically thinking that freedom should allow the people to make up their own minds.  With the imbalance that now exists with gerrymandered districts, campaign finance laws (once dubbed correctly by Rush as the Incumbent Protection Act), and the large machines that can be used to destroy an upstart citizen candidate, I have since changed my mind on the matter.  The founders never envisioned career politicians, yet the vast majority of our Representatives and Senators look at it that way rather than as a call to serve one’s country.

DeMint is right; even the most idealistic of people often become corrupted by the system.  His amendment doesn’t have a prayer in this climate, but it is good that he is raising the issue.  This is one issue that I think would find huge bi-partisan support among the American people, and huge bi-partisan opposition among those in power.  The only way something like this will ever pass is on an influx of enough fresh blood and enough of a populist revolution in this country to force the issue.  The Tea Party movement may be just that movement, but that moment has not yet arrived.

H/T: Stop the ACLU

I’ve written several times about the situation in Florida, where the NRSC-backed Charlie Crist (RINO-FL) is going up against former Florida Speaker of the House Marco Rubio (R-FL).  Rubio was on MSDNC this morning on Morning Joe, and spoke about the the need for a clear difference between the parties, where the GOP has gone wrong, and why he is running against Charlie Crist, a man for whom he once campaigned and supported:

People like Rubio are the future of the Republican Party and the GOP.  Conservatives need to send a message during the 2010 primary cycle that we will not automatically fall in line against the NRSC or NRCC backed candidate, and we will fight in the primary for real Conservatives.  That message can be made known by supporting Rubio in Florida and others like him all around the country.

It’s starting to look like the Democrats don’t have the votes for the public option.  An internal Democrat memo today shows that the Democrats in the House of Representatives have less than 200 of the 218 votes needed to pass Health Care Reform with a public option.  Similarly, in the Senate, Joe Lieberman announced today that he would join a filibuster of any Health Care Reform Bill that contained a public option.  This, along with Olympia Snowe’s declaration that she will not support Harry Reid’s Public Option, means no public option in the Senate, either.  This doesn’t even take into account Sens. Nelson, Lincoln, and Bayh, all of whom have expressed reservations about voting for cloture.  If the public option is removed, there are a enough members of the Progressive Caucus who are on the record stating that no bill is better than a bill without a public option.  Could ObamaCare be dead?

H/T: Ace of Spades and HotAir