A Bump in the Roadmap

[Geee]

American Spectator:

On Tuesday, Republicans lost a special congressional election in New York. Yesterday the Senate voted down the House GOP budget 40-55, with seven Republican senators defecting. The conventional wisdom holds that there is a causal relationship between these two events. Has House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity instead driven Republicans down the road to ruin?

First, some perspective is in order. The NY-26 race featured a former Buchanan Republican turned Democrat turned Tea Party independent Jack Davis. Davis has spent millions in three recent congressional campaigns. Running on conservative themes, he took 9 percent of the vote this time around.
"If anyone can find a race next year with a similar configuration, be my guest and apply the 'lessons learned' from this race to that one," warned political prognosticator Charlie Cook before the special election. "But implying that the outcome of this race portends anything about any conventional race next year amounts to cheap spin and drive-by 'analysis' of the most superficial kind, which is sadly becoming all too prevalent in Washington."
Republicans fared poorly in special elections throughout 2009 and 2010. The two most prominent exceptions -- Charles Djou winning a House seat in Hawaii due to Democratic divisions and Scott Brown beating one of the most inept Democratic campaigns in Massachusetts history to claim Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat -- portended nothing for the November results in those states. New York, with its dismal state GOP, was the Republicans' worst state for special elections during that period. Yet Republicans still gained 63 House seats in the national midterms.