STRAIGHT FROM CPAC: All Eyes on New Jersey

FOX ^ | February 28, 2009 | Tommy De Seno

[Coleus]

If you follow new GOP chief Michael Steele around these days, you can bet you’ll hear him bring up New Jersey’s gubernatorial race this year. He wants that blue state red again. From top to bottom, the GOP is talking about New Jersey.

Here at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reminded the crowds that the last time New Jersey had a conservative candidate for governor, he won with 70% of the vote (Tom Kean, 1984). That’s 70% — in New Jersey.

After that victory it is inexplicable that New Jersey’s Republican intelligentsia determined their Republican candidates would do better if they were more liberal. That’s been proven quite wrong. McConnell warned that the Republican Party risks becoming a regional party if they don’t start concentrating on places like the Northeast.

So how important is New Jersey’s race? Consider this: When Newt Gingrich spoke here at CPAC yesterday he called this year’s New Jersey race “one of the most consequential in American history.”

It’s that’s important.

So you can imagine the interest here when New Jersey Republican candidate for Governor Steve Lonegan took the stage. Not only was there a huge live audience but also around the sprawling conference area people stopped to watch the live feed on monitors in hallways and at the Exhibit Hall.

Steve Lonegan is a successful businessman and an accomplished mayor. He is a conservative and a tax slayer. He won election and reelection in a town where Democratic Party registration outpaces Republican party registration by a huge margin.

[Coleus]

If Mitch McConnell thinks Tom Kean is a conservative, then MCconnell doesn't know Tom Kean and it scares me to think that Mitch is in a leadership position in the republican party. And since 1984, NJ has become a mecca for liberal new yorkers and immigrants from the third world. What was republican then is democrat now, including bergen county.

[Da Coyote]

I saw the term “Republican Intelligencia...” As a conservative, I sense a supreme oxymoron there.

[KarenMarie]

snipped... And since 1984, NJ has become a mecca for liberal new yorkers and immigrants from the third world. What was republican then is democrat now, including bergen county.

you are so right about that. I live in Bergen Co and often drive around playing 'spot the American'. Also, I have loads of liberal family that moved from Staten Island to down the shore NJ.

[freekitty]

Translation - Another RINO

[cthemfly25]

I saw the term “Republican Intelligencia...” As a conservative, I sense a supreme oxymoron there.

Couldn’t agree more.

[FreepShop1]

Lonegan is a perennial loser, much as I like him, and have contributed to him in the past.

[Man50D]

CPAC couldn’t be more misguided allowing the increasingly socialist OP(formerly the GOP) at the convention considering the OP has incrementally moved towards socialists principles over the years to expand the voting base.

[hermgem]

A shining example in N.J. is their Governor Corzine.
A Wall Streeter going political and for a first buying himself a U.S. Senate seat.
Not enough, he coughed up another $8 million of own money, outspending everybody buying himself a New Jersey Governorship.
Result: Debts and more debts, accomplishments???
Oh yes, forgot that nasty super high speed car accident with this Governor unbelted and severely injured.
Makes another critically injured one but out of reach of recovery: the State of New Jersey. Corzine needs to go for New Jersey's good.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Mitch’s brain has turned to mush. There hasn’t been a Conservative Governor of New Jersey since Charles Edison in the early 1940s. Edison was a Democrat. He later left the party and helped found the NY Conservative Party. Tom Kean was the epitome of the liberal RINO Country-Clubber establishment that has been a cancer on the party and shriveled it to near-irrelevence in the northeast.

[aposiopetic]

Tom Kean was the epitome of the liberal RINO Country-Clubber establishment

I always got him and Bill Weld confused.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Seems to me that these supposed smart people fail to understand that a significant number of conservatives left the state and moved south.Every election they talk about how the republicans are going to take back new jersey and guess what.It dont happen.Why vote for a rino when you can get the real deal with a lib?

[fieldmarshaldj]

Weld’s the cancer of Massachusetts. He finally threw away his bullcrap of pretending to be a Republican and endorsed the False Messiah for President.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Now that gem they’re touting for Governor of NJ this year is another one of those elitist RINO liberals who is a big apologist for illegals. What is it we’re winning again by running these cretins ?

[Ted Grant]

There’s no liberal dem quite like a working class liberal dem. That’s what I always say!

You know the kind - he only has one suit, wipes his nose on his sleeve, punctuates his speech with references to being a working man (hey, pal, we all work, that doesn’t distinguish you), and that a politician has to look out for the little guy.

New Jersey is the armpit of America - lots of slow witted working class types who have been democrats since as long as they can remember. Sure, they can run the largest companies successfully if they were given the opportunity, but nobody ‘gave’ them the opportunity.

How so many uneducated losers who drink away every evening at a tavern (while neglecting their wives) and can’t balance a checkbook have convinced themselves they could run large, major businesses is a riddle they aren’t prepared to fully answer.

NJ going GOP? Nah, I hope Steele and crew don’t but too many eggs in that basket. They will look like fools the morning after election day as Jerseyites once again do what they always do.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Does it strike you that they may be doing this on purpose?How can people be this dumb.

[Ace of Spades]

“last time New Jersey had a conservative candidate for governor, he won with 70% of the vote (Tom Kean, 1984)”

Baloney. Bret Schundler was as conservative as they come, but the Republican establishment wouldn’t support him. He pi$$ed off too many people when he beat Bob Franks in the primary, so the party turned their back on him. The party in this state doesn’t want a conservative, they want a puppet.

[Ranjit]

Do you remember the congressional(1 district)election in Mississippi? There is no way a democrat can win and what happened? Dean did spend lot of money and they did win. Approval rate of Corzine is in toilet. This is the best time to take back NJ. Atleast the governorship

[Free_SJersey]

Lonegan is only a loser because the Democrats who run the New Jersey GOP sabbatage him (they’re so far left and corrupt they can’t even qualify as RINOs). I hope you gave to his campaign and not to the party. I look back to the 1800s when it was okay to tar and feather politicians.

[fieldmarshaldj]

It does strike me, indeed. I think there are more than a few people that want to see this country with one singular party, corrupt, and left-wing. You’ve already got a de facto merger in IL with “The Combine.” When outsiders like Conservative Pete Fitzgerald win, they have to be run out for a member of the corrupt establishment. Ray LaHood “LaThug” was the RINO who ran out Fitzgerald and paved the way for the False Messiah. LaThug gets his reward by getting a Cabinet post. Nice little arrangement, ain’t it ?

[Impy]

I’ve seen you mention Edison before, I never looked at his suckupedia page before though, I didn’t know he Thomas’s Edison’s son.