PA12 - A Post-Mortem On Tim Burns And A Lost Race

Not a good night for conservatives as Tim Burns handily lost his bid for John Murtha's seat in PA-12. And although moral victories count for nothing as far as shaping legislation is concerned, this is not a Titanic-esque disaster. Some points to ponder:

- Democrat Mark Critz defeated Burns 53% to 44%. A convincing win, to be sure. But in a district where registered Democrats comprise 62% of the electorate against a 31% Republican registration, Burns was able to get a fairly large amount of Democrats to cross over to his side. And that's encouraging, considering that...

-their was a huge Democratic Senatorial primary that was the focus of the state's voters (with Sestak beating Specter by a similar margin to the one shown above) and generated tremendous enthusiasm among the pary faithful. And yet, based on the registered voters in PA-12, many of these Democrats voted for Sestak, then switched parties down the line to vote for Burns.

-Finally, let's not forget that Critz was not running as a "Nancy Pelosi Democrat". Critz ran his campaign as a pro-life, pro-gun Democrat who was opposed to the health care bill and the cap-and-trade legislation. It seems as if many conservative Democrats did not feel the need to flip as they believed their concerns would be properly addressed by Critz, while allowing them to maintain their party loyalty.

We'll see. Critz now has to vote these principles, and a rookie congressman is nowhere in the House without the support of the leadership; let's see how easy it is for Representative Critz to defy Nancy Pelosi and Sten Hoyer now that he needs them, especially with his promise to continue bringing back the lard-dripping pork to the addicts of his district.

In November, these two will face off again. This time, Critz will have to run on a record and a list of promises made and broken. It might not be that easy for Mark the second time around...

FINAL THOUGHT: If anyone thought (especially establishment Republicans) that we would be able to sit back and re-take the House, this should serve as a wake up call. We ain't gonna win them all, and we are going to have to fight long and hard for every single seat, even a few that we already own. Hopefully this loss will still provide us with some lessons we can learn from, and apply to the big battles ahead...