If Corzine wins, should the NJ GOP disband?

[Lunar]

Or at least the strategists should be fired.




but some state parties can't help but sabotage themselves when they have powerful conservative constituencies that cannot nominate electable moderate candidates, especially as the modern GOP finds itself in it's 26 year low for partisan self-identification and often prefers closed primaries to open ones [at least in CA]...    

I think Lonegan's candidacy really forced Christie to the right when he had a fairly blank political slate on which he could declare any position he wanted and thus ascribe himself to be slightly right of center (picking some issues, like property taxes, to advocate radical reform in) instead of a mainstream conservative.   Hell, is it any surprise McDonnell is doing so well when he has been able to avoid arguing how conservative he is in a preliminary battle?  Or maybe it's just the fact that VA is more centrist and both races are becoming debates on the national Democratic Party with inverse results

 I can't really think of any Democratic state party equivalent...some would argue Artur Davis is gonna end up being the "wrong fit" for Alabama, but that's a relatively new occurrence and the argument against him is hardly ideological.    Any ideas for equivalence among Democrats?  

[Lunar]

Or at least the strategists should be fired.




but some state parties can't help but sabotage themselves when they have powerful conservative constituencies that cannot nominate electable moderate candidates, especially as the modern GOP finds itself in it's 26 year low for partisan self-identification and often prefers closed primaries to open ones [at least in CA]...    

I think Lonegan's candidacy really forced Christie to the right when he had a fairly blank political slate on which he could declare any position he wanted and thus ascribe himself to be slightly right of center (picking some issues, like property taxes, to advocate radical reform in) instead of a mainstream conservative.   Hell, is it any surprise McDonnell is doing so well when he has been able to avoid arguing how conservative he is in a preliminary battle?  Or maybe it's just the fact that VA is more centrist and both races are becoming debates on the national Democratic Party with inverse results

 I can't really think of any Democratic state party equivalent...some would argue Artur Davis is gonna end up being the "wrong fit" for Alabama, but that's a relatively new occurrence and the argument against him is hardly ideological.    Any ideas for equivalence among Democrats?  

to be honest I don't really know what any of this means but I will leave my whimsical rambling be

[Lunar]

I disagree with the dailykos metaphor of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown.

Is that a DKos analogy?  I can't remember where I picked it up, I think it's pretty common in the blogosphere generally.  The GOP does have a history of high hopes which collapsed towards election day in New Jersey, but never before have they had such factual reasons for these hopes.  Largely, I believe, they have hopes based on strong polling early on in elections, which is due to 1- Democrats in NJ not liking their politicians, but "coming home" from Undecided on election day and 2- The media markets in New Jersey are really f'n expensive, there is no "New Jersey" political market, any state-wide candidate has to run ads in New York and Phillie....this means that the two general election candidates are largely undefined in any political race until towards the end, which means the Democrats tend to get late boosts in undecideds once the undecideds in New Jersey remember they are closer to Democrats than Republicans.... the $ per ad view in New Jersey is the highest of any state because of how many other people you have to pay to see those ads for every person in NJ who sees them (and upscale markets have more disposable income resulting in higher advertising costs too).  

but the dynamics of this race are different than past races, with a third party and a deeply unpopular Republican



 

If Christie loses, it's because he didn't do a great job of defining himself.  In the case that he loses, I do agree with you that the top GOP Strategists in NJ should be fired and an overhaul of general GOP strategy for top races in NJ needs to occur.

Oh I agree.  If Christie loses it's because he ran a [relative to Corzine] horrible campaign, there's no reason a mainstream conservative shouldn't be able to defeat an incumbent as unpopular as Corzine, just like I'm pretty sure a candidate more conservative than Guiliani could cream Paterson in the even more Democratic New York, with or without a third party centrist candidate also in the mix.