If I am reading the Intrade prediction market correctly:

There is a 75% chance that Conservative Hoffman Wins in the controversial NY 23 district.

… a 46% chance Corzine will lose in NJ and a

… 99% chance of a Republican victory in the VA governor’s race.

NJ, VA and NY are not exactly hard red states.  This will keep the talking heads busy for weeks to come.

I sense that many independents that voted for Obama are having buyer’s remorse.

The danger of being independent is not having to define your position or governing philosophy beyond being ‘independent.’ For better or worse the parties do state a party platform and are in some limited sense held accountable to it.  As a candidate for that party you may reject part of the platform but you are associated with stated positions.  You may be a pro life Democrat or a pro choice Republican, but even that that says more about your political position than being ‘independent.’

The revolution within the Republican Party in the New York District 23 race where the Republican grass roots rejected the anointed party candidate, Dede Scozzafava, and supported Doug Hoffman shows the power of a grass roots movement.  But a grass roots movement has a similar problem of defining what it is that the party leadership has done to alienate them.

Do the independents or the populists support a more libertarian smaller government without the nationalization of major industries, 1990 page health care bills that no one has a chance to read, huge deficits, higher taxes, endless corruption, and endless government ‘programs’?   Or is it about the politics of religion and abortion?

Personally I believe it is the former. I believe that the leaders in DC are so insulated from the average voter and tax payer that they are clueless.  They surround themselves with the like minded and are only exposed to those views that support their own statist visions.  When they see a real populist uprising they assume they are wingnuts, dittoheads, manipulated from some sinister force, or otherwise not worthy of serious consideration.

The uprising may be a force without a voice, but to be effective it must define itself and stand for something.  Without standing for something we will fall for anything.

We have already done that.

The Race in NY District 23 has become a pivotal fight for the soul of the Republican Party.

Dede Scozzafava was run by the Republican machine but has been so thoroughly rejected by the Republican grass roots that she has effectively resigned from the race rather than face the disgrace of coming in third.  Republican Doug Hoffman has run under the Conservative party label in an effort to give the voters a truer conservative choice, given Scozzafava’s very liberal voting record.  Hoffman now faces Democrat Bill Owens.

Sides were selected and the Republicans split their support. Dick Army, Fred Thomson, and Sarah Palin have stumped for Hoffman while Newt Gingrich supported the official republican candidate.

This episode mirrors the campaign Joe Lieberman waged to retain his Democrat seat in Connecticut.  The liberal leg of the Democrats took his nomination for his support of Bush and the war in Iraq, but he ran as an independent and won.

Most impressive in this race is the impact of Erick Erickson, an A-list conservative blogger at Red State (and other sites) and a city councilman in our own Macon, GA. If you stop and think of the impact that a young conservative city councilman in Macon can now have in a NY district race you must appreciate the way the political landscape is changing.

Many conservatives were caught off guard by the effective use of the internet and social media by the Obama Campaign. They wished for that power but most did not really understand how to use it. Erick Erickson understands how to use it. It was probably an alarming lesson for the Republican Party elite.  The lesson is that that the era of top down party leadership is over.

The media will probably play that the Republican Party has now been hijacked by the ‘wingnuts’ and populist demagogues. While that may seem a risk it is not a certainty. More likely it will force the party apparatus to listen to those who feel they are without a political home.

Like all new sources of power this may come with a learning curve, but that is price of real change.