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Conservatives Hype Turner's NY-9 Win As A Rebuke Of Obama

Ryan Faughnder |
September 14, 2011 | 8:50 a.m. PDT

Senior News Editor

Republican Bob Turner’s upset victory over Dave Weprin in the special election for Anthony Weiner’s seat in New York’s 9th district is due to a variety of factors, but Republican leaders and conservative pundits are pushing it as a rebuke of President Barack Obama’s policies. This echoes the pronouncements over Scott Brown’s far more politically consequential victory in a Massachusetts special election that stripped the Democrats of their Senate supermajority in 2010. 

(via Newseum)
(via Newseum)

NRCC chair Peter Sessions called the President a “liability,” according to Talking Points Memo.

The election in the district, which is over 40 percent Jewish, became focused on policy over Israel, which no doubt contributed to Turner’s victory. Economic turmoil was another key factor, as was Democratic support for gay marriage in the state. The issue of building a mosque in lower Manhattan also came into play.

This has put some pundits on the defensive, with The Empire’s Colby Hamilton blaming the election results on a weak Democratic candidate in a district that was never fully supportive of Obama in the first place. Obama barely won the district in 2008.

The New York Times’ Nate Silver calls the blame-the-candidate game a “poor excuse.”

Mr. Weprin is not a world-beating candidate, but he’s been elected to other offices several times before and he holds positions on the issues that square well with his district. And it’s not as if Mr. Turner — a 70-year-old who has never held elected office before, who raised very little money and who lost by 20 points in 2010 — is the Queens equivalent of Scott Brown.

Salon’s Alex Pareene runs through the commentary that pushed the idea that the election was all about Isreal, ripping on pundits who claim Jewish voters have abandoned the President:

It ain't Florida. Even the Jewish vote there isn't just a referendum on Israel. The Jewish voters in the district are more likely to be Orthodox and hence already pretty conservative than Jewish voters nationwide. Despite Ed Koch's wishes, Turner and his allies have campaigned almost as hard on Weprin's support for gay marriage as they have on the Democratic party's supposed support for the imaginary "Ground Zero Mosque." The National Organization for Marriage has a prominent rabbi doing robocalls for Turner on gay marriage, not settlements and borders.

Ben Smith of Politico also questions the idea that the election pivoted on Israel-related issues: 

The subtleties, and their limits, are worth understanding here. The district does have more Orthodox congregations than any other in America. This doesn't necessarily mean this was a vote about Israel, or same-sex marriage, though. Many of those Orthodox Jewish voters are, simply, Republicans who typically support Republican candidates. They weren't swing voters in this race at all, though they were unusually well-organized and motivated; others, including a few I spoke to last night, spoke like other Americans about dissatisfaction with Obama's economic leadership.

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