HOW MUCH SHOULD PARTY IDEOLOGY FACTOR LOCALLY?

How much should major Party ideology be a factor in local elections? What presumptions should a Long Beach voter make of a candidate’s political philosophy perchance he or she runs on a given Party line? 

In the course of last November’s campaign, the Long Beach Democrat Party and its apparatchik ham-handedly and unjustifiably suggested that the Republican Clean Slate candidates are reflections of a conservative, “Tea Party” ideology. County Democrats tried this same tactic at several rallies. Tom Suozzi’s “Stand Against the Tea Party” rallies at Democrat headquarters in Carle Place and in Hempstead failed miserably. If you never left Long Beach, you would think the Republican Party did not exist after November’s elections.  Aside from Long Beach, the Republican Party ran roughshod in Nassau County. Ed Mangano clobbered Suozzi. George Maragos won as Comptroller and Maureen O’Connell won handily as County Clerk. The GOP gained a seat in the legislature. Virtually every Republican judge won, and all Towns held to form. There was even a Republican mayor elected in Glen Cove. Why did it work in Long Beach?  Why did the Democrats stoop to make attacks on “ideology?”  

The positive press and accomplishments of the administration following Sandy seemed to be all the Democrats needed to win in 2013 in Long Beach. Why did they impute a conservative ideology to Republican candidates when by all conventional standards the GOP candidates would not even had measured up to high conservative ratings? In reality, many so-called Tea Party members and other conservative or libertarian ideologues can’t stand the Republican Party. They expect the worst from the Democrats, but they expect it. Their negative feelings for Republicans comes from like that of a jilted lover; they expected better. To think that conservative voters were lock-step behind the Republican Party is unfounded to think and duplicitous to repeat.  

In an editorial appearing in the Long Beach HERALD (“R.I.P., GOP”, The Herald, July 18, 2013) Jerry Kremer suggested the “demise” of the Republican Party was happening because the G.O.P is embracing Tea Party principles. I contend any demise would be because they are straying from conservative principles. The Republican Party lost effectiveness in 2012, because it became indistinguishable from the Democrat Party.  

The Democrat Party has become neo-McCarthyites fearing there is a conservative hiding behind every podium, and come across as just as petty and intolerant as Joe McCarthy was. Why are Democrats afraid of conservatives in the first place? I believe that there is nothing wrong to be committed to limited government, strict reading of the Constitution and traditional social values. Notwithstanding, there is nothing I have read or heard from most local Republican candidates that reflects a conservative ideological attachment.  In fact, all eight of the candidates for local office from both Parties of the 2013 Long Beach election had no record of particularly embracing any ideology at all (with the possible exception of Working Family Party officer and labor organizer Anthony Eramo.)  

Most recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo breached humbris barriers by declaring in January that there was ‘no place for conservatives in New York State.’  Such rhetoric is unjust, if not dangerous, that an imperious governor should publically advocate disenfranchisement of any part of his constituency. Can anyone say “pogrom?” 

Ideology rarely filters into local election issues. What the Democrats tried was a straw-dog argument. They made blanket generalizations of those embracing conservative principle and blanket and unfounded assertions that all Republicans hold to such conservative principles. But if one still insists to assert that the all Republicans reflect Tea Party values, the honest voter would have to consistently and equally assert that all of the Democrat candidates reflect the extreme liberal agenda of their national Party and therefore linked with overreaching government, tax and spend, eroding civil liberties for common purpose, and imputed for the likes of Benghazi, NSA spying and the incompetent breakdown of the Obamacare roll-out.  Already, many Democrats are running for cover from Obama’s dropping approval, distancing themselves.  If you make one generalization, in fairness you have to make the other. 

For better or worse, most local candidates are not ideologues and should be judged on the merits of their vision. Stereotypes are the canard of the desperate. My own conservatism has never been an impediment to a solid social justice and pro-environment resume.  Many of yesterday’s liberals concerned for eroding civil rights and police-like control of civilian expression are replaced by conservative voices who have taken the mantle once thought to be the territory of classic political liberalism.  As for me, I’d rather drink the Tea than the Kool-Aid, but whatever floats your boat.  

To allow ideological smokescreens to skewer local elections and local issues should not go without challenge.