In the middle of a breathless, stupid missive from the Family Research Council hate group [short version: give us money!], they use the defeat of Anthony Weiner to make themselves and their minions feel better:
Meanwhile in the heart of liberal New York City, pro-family Democrats helped elect a Republican for the first time since the 1920′s. A major deciding factor? The losing Democratic candidate, while in the state senate, offended many of his religious constituents by voting to redefine marriage to appease a small homosexual constituency.
Yeah, no. There is an anti-incumbent atmosphere right now [as there often is with American voters these days, but especially when the economy sucks], and oh, also, Anthony Weiner was a disgraced former congressman. That tends to contribute to whether a party keeps a seat in a special election, even though the Democratic candidate, in this case Weprin, is a totally different person. If this district votes for a Republican again, then we can start talking about “deciding factors” and whatnot. Of course, redistricting is about to, most likely, eliminate that congressional seat anyway, so I’m not sure why we’re even talking about this.
No, Family Research Council, the tide is not turning in your direction, and it’s not going to turn in your direction. I know it makes your followers feel better [and more likely to give you their bingo winnings] to assert such things, but to the rest of us it just looks sad.
Also, read Roy Edroso on this. Maggie Gallagher has had equally stupid things to say about the NY-9 election, and he makes fun of her right nicely.
Whenever any politician loses an election a special interest group is always certain to holler that the reason was the politician didn’t support the group’s special interest enough.
Most everyone is saying the real reasons are the economy and Israel but a very good point was made by someone who said the Democrats in Queens deliberately put up a weak candidate specifically because they didn’t want a strong one who might make trouble for Joe Crowley or Gary Ackerman next year when the district is merged into others. That backfired; they now have an incumbent Republican.