Republican Dede Scozzafava was the real winner on Tuesday

I’m sure that a portion of Republicans on campus are still pumped over the Republican wins in Tuesday’s election and probably even believe that they are evidence of a comeback from the party’s embarrassing losses in the 2008 election and that the president and House and Senate Democrats are losing credibility with the American public.

However, winning two gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey and one mayoral race in New York isn’t a mandate from the American people for the Republican ideology, nor is it a sign that the American people oppose the Democratic House and Senate proposals or President Obama. Winning three positions in two states is merely a sign that in two states, the Republican Party had stronger candidates in their particular local and state elections.

And I give them full credit for having stronger candidates. The Democratic losses, while predictable, were definitely not excusable or insignificant. They reminded me that Democrats can be very weak, and, sadly, that they will even resort to the same negative campaign tactics I so dislike from the Republican Party — particularly in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, in which incumbent Governor Corzine railed Republican Chris Christie (the eventual winner) for his weight.

And no one ever expected Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds, a Democrat, to win; his campaign was lackluster from the beginning. Not to mention the fact that for the past 32 years, the winner of the Virginia gubernatorial race has always been from the opposite party as the President of the United States. It simply fits the trend that a Republican would win this election because a Democrat won the White House.

But the really important story to emerge from this election is the interesting turn of events in New York’s 23rd District contest for a one-year seat in the House of Reps. If any contest Tuesday has national implications, it’s this one. And before vitriolic Republican readers start typing an angry smear response, it’s not just because Bill Owens, the Democrat, ended up winning.

No, this story’s hero is a Republican. She’s not a hero because she upholds my values (she doesn’t) or because she helped a Democrat win, but because she took a stand for centrism and reason in an ideological environment that favors neither.

The 23rd District contest started out with three candidates. Bill Owens ran as a Democrat, Dede Scozzafava ran as a Republican, and Doug Hoffman ran as a Conservative. Since the 23rd District has been a conservative district for the past century, it makes sense that two conservative candidates would run.

At first, Dede Scozzafava was ahead in the polls. But then Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the tea baggers started getting involved. They said that because of her support for the stimulus package, abortion rights, and gay rights, she was too liberal for the Republican Party. And then they threw their weight behind Hoffman.

The weekend before the election, struggling in the polls,Scozzafavashocked everyone when she dropped out of the race and shifted her support to Democrat Bill Owens. Explaining her decision to Syracuse newspaper The Post-Standard, Scozzafava lamented, “The amount of hate and lies and the deceitfulness.”

“I don’t believe that should be the characteristics that define the Republican Party. I think people should be allowed to have discussions and reasonable disagreements. But this was a full frontal assault on me personally and politically, for weeks,” she continued.

As an example, the Monday after her decision, Rush Limbaugh said, “We can say [Scazzafava] is guilty of widespread bestiality. She has screwed every RINO in the country.” There are a lot of ignorant layers to that statement. Every time I tune in to Rush or read quotes like these, I really wonder why people care about what he has to say. He’s so vulgar that, to me, the ideas he’s trying to convey become repulsive, simply because of his word choice and comparisons.

The issue inherent in Scozzafava’s decision to support Owens (and perhaps the reason Owens won a seat that has been held by a Republican for the past century) is that the conservatives are cleaving to extremism and exiling their moderate voices. The fact that Scazzafava was pushed out by the loud Republican voices shows that the Republican tent has no room for moderate voices. They welcome only group thinkers and people who tow the party line. That’s not an attractive image for a political party, and it’s not good for American politics and the arena of ideas.

I think Scozzafava’s actions highlighted the fact that Republicans are not fighting the Democratic proposals or even the public option. They’re fighting against their own moderates, reasonableness, and discussion–things a political party should welcome–and in the process, they’re proving that Jimmy Carter was right when he said, “Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.”