2nd District Congressional Election Reaction Roundup

Local, Regional, and National Reaction:

Noon:

• Nix Guy revisits the numbers.
• Weapons of Mass Discussion beats up on Brown County Republicans.
• Face Made 4 Radio doesn’t trust Schmidt to be conservative.
• Gray Fox acknowledges the need to dine on a side-order of crow, and has five good points.

1:30 PM:

• The indispensable Media Research Center details the network TV news coverage reaction (no surprises here).
• Project Logic has “congrats” for Hackett and what is so far the quote of the day (read the whole thing-this is only one of many astute observations):
  

  But no matter how he did it, Paul Hackett deserves some credit. He took Howard Dean’s rhetoric, wrapped it up in John Kerry’s resume, and then somehow scored major points out of an area that dislikes both of them. Kudos Mr Hackett, and here’s to making sure it never happens again.

• The aforementioned Project Logic and Yankee Red, who discusses the reasons the GOP base is going blase, deserve major league accolades for being there on the front lines during the campaign.

2:00 PM:

• Little Green Footballs through Environmental Republican notes that Daily Kos has a perfect record for supporting Democrat candidates: a perfect losing record.
• Hedgehog, whose readers worked very hard at overloading BizzyBlog last night, and actually succeeded for a brief time (seriously, thanks for the interest, folks; I thought I was bulletproof, and will investigate why I’m not), notes that special elections like these are not necessarily good predictors for the next big November contests.

2:15 PM:

• Hugh Hewitt points to PoliPundit’s take as “exactly right.” Well, Hugh, it’s okay, but Project Logic above on fumes runs circles around it, as would be expected from someone who was involved and who paid attention–something you guys didn’t do, and should have done. National center-right blog apathy almost cost conservatives a seat in the House (please hold the snark on Schmidt not being a conservative).
• Rush is disappointing today. His excuse is that yesterday’s characterization of Hackett as a “staff puke” is something a soldier would use in normal conversation with another soldier. So? You aren’t talking to soldiers, Rush, you’re talking to the nation. Maybe you could get a pass if you had explained how soldiers converse among themselves when you used the term, but you didn’t. As it was, your use of the term was reckless (you probably didn’t know at the time that Hackett has faced enemy fire; I’ll bet you do now), and it motivated the Democratic base here to an extent that I believe outweighed the benefits of your exposure of the two faces of Paul Hackett.

3:30 PM:

• Michael Meckler catches something I didn’t (or more accurately, couldn’t, because the ridiculous way Hamilton County aggregated the votes made this impossible to determine)–Hackett LOST Hamilton County by 4,000 1,400 (corrected, Hackett loss still unexpected) votes. Meckler gives credit to the Hamilton County GOP machinery, which appeared to be moving towards irrelevance after the Pat DeWine debacle in the primary, for stepping up bigtime for Schmidt.

3:45 PM:

• Powerline’s first post on the race was at 9:30 last night, 2 hours after the polls closed. Not, really, useful.
• Look, I’m not saying this because I expect the center-rights to be knee-jerk shills in ever race. By any reasonable measure there was real news happening here, both during the primary and through August 2, and it was ignored. So you can see how I would consider Wizbang’s justification for ignoring the race weak (to give Wiz his due, he did a post on McEwen when BizzyBlog lodged his first objection to McEwen’s candidacy, and [updated 8/4] blogged on the combat controversy in the week before the election).

4:10 PM:

• RedState.org diarist Adam C. says the Ohio GOP needs to wake up … NOW.
• It took about 6 hours, but AP went into full Democrat spin mode with their supposedly “objective” wire service story. Notice how the “She is the first woman ever elected to Congress from the 2nd District” language that was in this earlier version of the story dropped off the page once Democrat Rahm Emmanuel’s talking points got assembled.

7:15 PM (final entry):

• Speaking of AP, here’s a prize excerpt from their coverage of Paul Hackett’s concession (HT Best of the Web):
  

  Hackett complained about politicians who “use the war to wrap themselves in the American flag” and called the administration’s approach to using the military to fight on several fronts simultaneously–in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans–while cutting taxes “irrational” and “patriotism light.” . . .

  In his concession speech, Hackett made a veiled reference to his criticisms of Bush: “Chickens are a very interesting bird, not to be confused with birds of prey.” He earlier had called Bush, who had a noncombat role in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, a “chicken hawk S.O.B.”

  “I meant it, I said it and I stand by it,” Hackett said.

  That’s really nice, Paul. And I’ll make sure to remember it.

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UPDATE, August 4, 11AM Here’s a perfect example of why Media Research Center is a precious national resource (bolds are mine):

“If elected, Paul Hackett would become the first lawmaker to have served in the Iraq war,” ABC anchor Terry Moran trumpeted on Sunday’s World News Tonight. But on Wednesday night, after the Democratic Marine reservist lost to Republican Jean Schmidt for the Southwestern Ohio U.S. House seat, World News Tonight didn’t utter a word about Hackett’s loss.

CBS Evening News anchor Russ Mitchell had hyped how the contest “is shaping up as a referendum on Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy,” yet when, apparently, that referendum went the wrong way, CBS fell silent, not mentioning the outcome on Wednesday’s Evening News.

NBC Nightly News provided a brief update on the race, but anchor Campbell Brown touted how “Paul Hackett, a Democrat, made a stronger than expected showing.” Over on CNN, Inside Politics anchor Joe Johns described a “surprisingly tight election that caught national attention” before Bill Schneider insisted Schmidt had “barely” won, “which is why the Democrats are celebrating.” In fact, Schneider forwarded the proposition that “the losers have more to celebrate than the winners.”

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UPDATE 2, August 4, 6PM: Hackett’s turning into the gift that keeps on giving. In an interview on the Pacfica radio network, Hackett was in full-defiance mode:

And to the chicken-hawks out there that think that what I say about this administration is not representative to some large degree in the military, I say that this was only a shot over the bow. You had better wake up and smell the coffee, because we are minting young Democrats day by day in Iraq, and maybe it didn’t happen in this election, but it’s going to happen in many elections in the future.

Uh-huh. Keep talking, Paul. Please.
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UPDATE 3, August 9: Howard Dean didn’t mean to, but he beat up on Paul Hackett’s stealth approach today (HT Best of the Web):

“What the propagandists on the right have done is make people afraid to say they are Democrats. We have to be out there. We have to be vocal. We have to be pushing our version of the facts because their version of the facts is very unfactual.”

Hackett, in the mean time, in a approach guaranteed to make him a moonbat darling but simultaneously less electable, went after Rush Limbaugh (HT OH02):

That’s typical for that fatass drug addict to come up with something like that. There’s a guy … I didn’t hear this, but actually when I was on drill this weekend, I’ve got to tell you, he lost a lot of Republican supporters with his comments. Because they were coming up to me, telling me, “I can’t believe he said that! Besides that, he called you a soldier. He doesn’t know the difference between a soldier and a marine!”

So generally, the consensus is Rush doesn’t know squat about patriotism. He’s typical of the new Republican. He’s got a lot of lip and he doesn’t walk the walk. The fact of the matter is, I went to Iraq to serve my country. I left my nice house, my nice wife by my choice because I thought it was the right thing to do. And man, if I was good enough to be able to see into the future that Rob Portman was going to step down from Congress, I mean I should actually be running for something a lot more than Congress. I went to Iraq because I wanted to serve my country and be with my Marines.

I think it probably says more about Rush Limbaugh than it does anybody else that he comes up with those thought processes. And I think it’s indicative of today’s Republican party, which is patriotic lite translated to anybody who serves their country who truly who truly serves their country and demonstrates it by their actions as opposed to their flapping gums.

They want to attack us. But the fact of the matter is they can attack me, but I punch back just as hard as I get. Ask Rush how come he wasn’t taking phone calls for the two days when he was on the attack with me. Ask him why his phone lines were clogged up. That’s because he was getting thousands of calls from veterans from this war and other wars who were clogging up his phone lines, giving him an earful.

The chances that he will go back to Iraq as promised appear to grow dimmer with each passing day, and each additional rant. (August 13–Dan at The Other Corner reacts to the anti-Rush rant.)

UPDATE 4, August 11: Speaking of Howard Dean, Hackett channeled him on Wednesday night’s Hardball on MSNBC (HT Weapons of Mass Discussion):

I don’t necessarily believe the United States is better off today now that Saddam Hussein is gone…Saddam Hussein is an evil guy. And my question is, who appointed us to be the police force of the world?”

The collection of quotes virtually assuring unelectability continues to grow.

UPDATE 5, August 21: (HT Eric Minamyer and Crooks & Liars) It just never ends with Hackett. He was a last-minute replacement for anti-war radical mom Cincy Sheehan on Bill Maher’s HBO show on August 19. BizzyBlog has saved the video. Highlights: Debate over whether Bush is ignorant or stupid, a bizarre bit on “anal” something or other (not kidding), and a wrap at the end essentially saying we should come home now regardless of the situation (a COMPLETE repudiation of the pretend-hawk pretend-Republican video). Crooks & Liars hopes other OIF vets will run for office–so do I, C&L, because they will mostly be the polar opposite of Hackett.