Editorial: The Wrong Kind of Enthusiasm

Editorial: The Wrong Kind of Enthusiasm
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: August 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/opinion/26thu2.html?th&emc=th


Republican insurgents from the far right did well in Tuesday’s primaries. What their campaigns lack in logic, compassion and sensible policy seems to be counterbalanced by a fiercely committed voter base that is nowhere to be seen on the Democratic side.

In Alaska, Joe Miller, a little-known lawyer from Fairbanks, has a lead for the G.O.P. Senate nomination over Lisa Murkowski, the incumbent. The race is too close to call, but Mr. Miller’s possible victory shows the power of his mentor, Sarah Palin, and the misguided popularity of his anti-immigrant, pro-gun message. Among other dubious positions, he has questioned the constitutionality of unemployment benefits.

In Florida, far more Republicans turned out to vote than Democrats, even though the Democrats have a large registration advantage. In the G.O.P. governor’s race, those voters chose Rick Scott, a former health care executive, who used his personal fortune and hard-right rhetoric on immigration to beat Bill McCollum, the attorney general, who is no centrist.

Party voters clearly did not care that Mr. Scott’s trumpeted business skills were honed as chief executive of Columbia/HCA, which paid $1.7 billion in federal fines after bilking Medicaid with phony reimbursement claims. Mr. Scott said he knew nothing of the fraud and left with a substantial severance payment.

The good news is that the anti-immigrant message may not play as well in Florida in the general election. The Democratic nominee for governor, Alex Sink, who opposes the Arizona immigration law, polled more votes on Tuesday than did Mr. Scott. In the state’s Republican Senate primary, Marco Rubio, a Tea Party candidate who is backed by Ms. Palin but who has been less shrill on immigration, won more than a million votes after Gov. Charlie Crist dropped out to run as an independent.

Insurgents did not triumph everywhere. In Arizona, Senator John McCain easily fended off a challenge by a former congressman, J. D. Hayworth. But he did so by throwing his principles overboard. Gone was the stalwart voice for campaign finance reform and a humane, bipartisan overhaul of immigration laws. In his place was a man calling himself “Arizona’s last line of defense,” strutting along the Mexican border in a campaign ad, telling a county sheriff that all we had to do to fix immigration was “complete the danged fence.”

Much of the G.O.P’s fervid populist energy has been churned up by playing on some people’s fears of Hispanics and Muslims, by painting the president as a dangerous radical, by distorting the truth about the causes of the recession. Far too many Republican leaders have eagerly fed that destructive anger.

And where are the Democrats in all of this? Last time we checked, they were fleeing solid accomplishments on health care, financial reform and the economy. President Obama and his party have little time left to gin up enthusiasm and a lot more committed voters.