The story, and my thoughts, are at bRight & Early.

My guess is that the crowd at CPAC is going to love this choice. He is extremely popular with party activist, going 12-0 in straw polls, winning most by huge margins.

Read the whole thing.

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Jump Start: Discuss the shootings at Fort Hood.

I haven’t mentioned it in a while, but Reclaim Conservatism is looking for writers who would like to write on the topics of Conservatism, Conservative Values and Principles, and Reclaiming conservatism. It can be recurring or just an occasional, or even one time, post.

You can do this two ways. If you want to contribute on a regular basis just register here (the link is down at the bottom of the right sidebar) and shoot an email to lakelandjim at gmail dot com letting me know of your interest. Or, if you just have a guest post you’d like to add here send it to contributors at reclaimconservatism dot com.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Looking at the results from yesterday’s elections I see different meaning in the different races we all were following. It’s almost as if people are individuals with differing outlooks and ideas of what is important. (Yes, that was sarcasm)

In New York City — Mayor Bloomberg won by a much narrower margin than the money he spent seemed to indicate. I think in part this is a mixed message of people in favor of the job he is doing, but somewhat turned off by the way he fought for the right to win another term.

In Virginia — The McDonnell win in Virginia, after nearly a decade of Democratic control, is partially a repudiation of Obama policies and direction. Although most of the electorate said that Obama wasn’t a direct consideration in their vote, the economy and jobs did play a large role and that is a reflection on the year old administration.

In New Jersey — This was probably the biggest upset of the night. While the trends ahead of the election were in Christie’s favor, few people expected the margin that came in. While this race, again, wasn’t all about Obama, the flip side of that coin is that the significant support the President gave Corzine didn’t move the voters. That sends a message for 2010. Economy and property taxes were the main issues. Now it’s up to Christie to lead on those things. If there’s not real movement in these areas I fear for my birth state.

In New York 23 — This race received a tremendous amount of national coverage, probably out of proportion to it’s national impact. There were so many things going on in this race, especially in the last few weeks, that we may never know all the factors that entered in to this decision. I doubt is we will ever see another race where the republican candidate is arguably to the left of the democrat, and where a conservative third party candidate garners overwhelming national attention and support in a moderate republican district. Did conservatives have too much riding on this outcome? I don’t think we know, at least not yet.

Those are my first thoughts. Leave yours in the comments.

Welcome to the overnight open thread at Reclaim Conservatism.

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Jump Start: Discuss Tuesday’s results.

Are the results we are about to see meaningful beyond the districts and states involved, or is the outcome essentially meaningless?

My gut says that the truth is somewhere between the extremes. At the core, however, I think that this will be a good day for conservatism and conservative values. Your thoughts? The comments are open.

UPDATE: Poll Added.

I meant to post this at midnight last night. Oh well.

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Jump Start: Discuss today’s elections.

It’s the race the political blogoshpere, cable and network news, and print sources are all talking about — New York’s special election in House district 23. If you tuned out Friday afternoon, you may have missed a few things.

On Friday, the day after the only three way debate, Hoffman continued to pick up endorsements from George Pataki and others. On Saturday Dede Scozaafava decided to suspend her campaign, and on Sunday she showed how much being a “Life-long Republican” meant to her — by supporting Democrat Bill Owens.

Scozzafava dropped out after Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman experienced a late-in-the-game surge. The move was expected to consolidate GOP voters behind Hoffman on Tuesday.

But on Sunday, Scozzafava issued a written statement in which she backed Democrat Bill Owens.

As Ed Morrissey and many others pointed out,

Doesn’t this prove the point conservatives had been making about Dede Scozzafava all along?

Why, yes. Yes it does.

As you can imagine, all of these various pieces have shook up the polling. The only one I’ve seen – post Dede – is one from PPP.

In a three way contest with Democrat Bill Owens and Republican Dede Scozzafava Hoffman leads with 51% to 34% for Owens and 13% for Scozzafava. In a head to head contest with Owens Hoffman holds a 54-38 advantage.

In other words, it’s a toss-up. What? That’s what Mike Allen suggested on Morning Joe.

The claim by Allen, Politico’s chief political correspondent, was so absurd that, on the spot, host Joe Scarborough offered 3:1 odds to Allen and anyone else wanting to place a few kopeks on Dem Bill Owens.

The real poll is tomorrow. Along with the governorships in NJ and VA it should be an interesting 48 hours.

Crossposted from bRight & Early

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Jump Start: How big is NY-23 to the idea of Reclaiming Conservatism?

Following the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama for his incredible record of, well, nothing, at bRight & Early I pointed to an article in The American Spectator by Jeffry Lord. In the article he suggested that a real peace prize should be created and awarded in the name of someone who actually promoted peace and liberty around the world — Ronald Reagan.

The hard cold facts of history illustrate that the peace through strength policies initiated by President Reagan were a success. His belief in the importance of human freedom, in directly opposing tyranny and protecting liberty, combined with the maintenance and, when needed, projection of a strong military, ended the Cold War and the “evil empire” that was the Soviet Union. Reagan’s strategy freed millions of East Europeans enslaved since the end of the Second World War, which in turn was brought on by the inexcusably wrong-headed, naive if well-intentioned policies of one Nobel Peace Prize winner after another.

Jeffery has taken this idea and begun action to create Ronald Wilson Reagan Prize for Peace.

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