So, the good people of NY's 26th have spoken. And by all accounts it seems they spoke for nation's larger body politic: You pols can monkey with taxes in unintelligible ways or further heat the atmosphere or conduct mindless wars on credit or even cut spending when we most need it, but don't -- we repeat, do not -- mess with Medicare.
The people's message was unmistakable. From an intensely conservative district came a rebuke of the conservative candidate, yet a profound confirmation of conservatism: They rejected the radical change of the contemporary GOP's reactionaryism and they instead embraced the traditional and familiar.
Yesterday's election results will be as grossly misread by some progressives as by some disbelieving Republicans. In their own minds, the voters of NY's 26th didn't choose socialism over right-wing overreach -- although, more than just technically, in reality they did; they voted for the status quo. And that's the electoral reality that cannot be overemphasized. (Whether they'll be just as willing to vote for higher taxes to support the socialism they did/did not support yesterday is an altogether different question, but their vast acceptance and embrace of the entitlement status quo was also vastly undisguised.)
Such is yesterday's conspicuous lesson, which few on the right would sincerely dispute and even fewer would deliberately misinterpret, since misinterpretation could only produce more political humiliation and self-destructive losses. Right?
Perhaps. That is not, however, the advice which instantly shot from the GOP's Department of Strategic Redesign. From Politico, I quote one of the party's designers:
From day one, our members need to be attacking their challenger for supporting the president’s Medicare-cutting health care bill and his plan to ration benefits for future seniors. Paul Ryan was wrong; leaders don’t change polls – scaring seniors changes polls, and we had better be prepared to do it as shamelessly as they did in this special if we want to retain the majority.
So rather than Socratic exchange or rational debate or the pleasantness of a coming synthesis, we are more likely than not about to experience from the GOP the most venomous election in history.