Fox News' Hume acknowledges, "Barack Obama was not a central issue" in New Jersey gubernatorial race
November 03, 2009 11:27 pm ET
From Fox News' November 3 election coverage:
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As Tip O'Neil said, "All politics is local". The VA & NJ governors races were local referendums, having little to do with the Obama administration. Times are hard and people voted against the party of the incumbent. It will have little effect on the president.
Here in NJ, we have a habit of electing one party for eight years, then the other for the next eight years. Even when we do elect a Republican governor, we usually elect a moderate. In fact if the last two Republican Governors of New Jersey were running for office, they'd be driven out of the Republican Party. Both Christie Whitman and Thomas Kean were centrists. Neither wore god on their sleeve or used divisive issues to get elected or to govern. I'm sure Christie will be similar.
The race in NY's 23rd district was different because national, far right conservatives interfered in a local race. They supported someone who did not understand the needs of the people he wanted to represent.
The will of the local Republican Party was overruled by unelected, self serving, Republican personalities like Palin and Pawlenty.
What is important is that the voters are beginning to see the mistake that was made in 2008 , and are beginning to take the steps to correct it.
But you can go on thinking that these results are of no importance.
The only race in which those elements came into play was the NY 23rd district congressional election. And those national figures, who appeal to the rightwingnuttery, are responsible for the Republicans losing the only race with national importance.
Neither Christie nor McDonnell will have a say in heath care reform or any of the other issues of national importance.
Corzine was unpopular BEFORE Obama was elected. The exit polls showed that people still like Obama and that their vote against Corzine was simply a vote against him. Totally irrelevant to the whole political club rivalry. Contrary to the spin, it was not unprecedented that a Republican would win in NJ. Christine Todd Whitman was the Republican governor of NJ from 1994 to 2001.
The Virginia race simply followed historical precedent. In every post presidential election since the last 1970s, the newly elected governor of Virginia in the following year has been of the OPPOSITE party of the president. Again, the exit polls indicated that the voters are still very positive about Obama and that their votes were not indictments of Obama.
The reason the election in NY-23 is significant is that there had been NO Democratic representative elected from that district in 130+ years. When Palin, Beck, Bachmann, etc., decided that the RNC candidate wasn't "conservative" enough, they threw their support to the Conservative Party candidate. So, you had a "Conservative" candidate running for representative in an UBER-Conservative district where no Democrat had won for 130+ years who had the support and financial backing of some of the biggest names in the phony conservative line-up, and guess what? The Democrat won. That's news.
Try learning something by turning off Fox. You aren't getting news there.
Love all this MSM talk about GOP governors' "sweep" tonight, too. Like how many seats were there? Two?
You are aware that Christine Todd Whitman, a REPUBLICAN was governor of NJ from 1994-2001, right? I realize that the below link is from Wikipedia, which is not a great source, but this is simply a list of Governors of NJ. You'll note that there have been MANY Republican governors of that "heavily democratic state."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_New_Jersey
The exit polls in both VA and NJ indicated that the voters were not voting against Obama and that he is still quite popular in both of those states.
SPIN . . . that's what you're listening to, fairliberal. Your hero is the biggest spinner on Fox.
As for Obama's favoribility ratings (from CNN) in NJ, it's 57%. And Obama won 57.1% of the vote last year at this time. So this is no referendum on Obama, as many have pointed out.
Likewise in VA, the president's favoribility rating is currently 51%, and he carried VA with 52.6% of the vote from last year at this time. Again, hardly any sort of referendum.
Exit polling also indicated strongly that these elections were not about Obama.
Co-host: "Saved at the last minute."
Yes, because Bill Thompson being elected Mayor of NYC would have been like an asteroid wiping out all life on Earth. NYC has been "saved" at the last minute from having a black mayor.
These people are repulsive.
No Corizine really did badly in New Jersey and people were fed up with him. Really the bigger issue was NY-23. A democrat won there for the first time in over a 100 years. Thst just shows the dysfunction in the right and the failure of a candidate who supported Glen Beck!