the rix mix

An amazing blog post. Thuman Hart is so shocked, shocked, to discover there's gambling in the establishment (Hudson County Democratic Machine) that he's dropping his Democratic voter registration & registering as a Repug. So he becomes an instant RINO. But he's still not voting for Chris Christie. I wasn't even registered to the Democrats until I wanted to vote in a local city council primary & had to declare myself. When I did, the automated phone calls doubled at general election time. But even as a "registered Democrat" I'm not a member of the Democratic Party. A political party is an institution first & only secondarily a democratic process. There've been up to four Democratic Parties on the primary ballot in Union County, only one of which is the "regular" party that actually controls the Courthouse by fielding winning candidates in the primaries & generals. & that "regular" party does occasionally suffer defeats in local primaries by well-organized insurgencies, few of which offer any real hope for reform. They want their own hands on the controls. The Repugs in Jersey are weak because their machines are weak, not because they're too honest to win. If they elect a governor today, it's on resentment, & the party hacks will be lining up for (& receive) the spoils of victory: state patronage jobs. If Steve Lonegan's right wing supporters want power, then they have to do more than gripe about taxes, post nasty comments on the web, throw a few bucks at the candidate, & show up at one rally featuring Joe the Plumber.

Republicans in Union County, who do control some towns, couldn't even field a third candidate for freeholder. What if Corzine wins the statewide election by a few hundred votes that one additional local Repug candidate may have generated with a spirited campaign? There are debatable issues here.