Barone not as willing as others to dismiss N.Y. congressional result as a fluke

While Democrats crow over an upset win in a special New York congressional election, most conservative commentators have dismissed the notion that the result has any bearing on the 2012 election.

Michael Barone‘s latest Washington Examiner article takes a different approach:

Nonetheless I think it has to be said that the Medicare issue helped the Democrat win an upset victory in a district that remained Republican even in the very Democratic years of 2006 and 2008. The 26th district voted 52%-46% for John McCain in 2008 and 55%-43% for George W. Bush in 2004. Even if you add to Corwin’s percentage the 9% of the votes cast for the self-financing Jack Davis, formerly the Democratic nominee here but this time running as the nominee of a self-concocted “tea party” party, the combined Republican+Davis percentage is just 52%, the same number John McCain won in his losing race , and significantly short of the 55% George W. Bush won in his (nationally) winning race and far less than the 66% and 60% won by the Republican candidates for state controller and attorney general in the district in 2010 (percentages which may be elevated due to the local popularity of Republican governor nominee, Buffalo-based Carl Paladino, who carried western New York by a wide margin but bombed almost everywhere else in New York state). These numbers were no worse for Republicans than 2008, but no better either. And so at least in this race in this district the Republican was clearly not running up to 2010 levels.

So I agree wholeheartedly with my Examiner colleague Conn Carroll, Republicans need to go on the offensive on Medicare. Or as the Washington Post’s Dan Balz wrote in his analysis: “Republican leaders believe in their agenda and are not likely to back away from it just because they lost one House seat, particularly one that they could very well win back in 2012. But they have not yet won the argument over how best to deal with the country’s fiscal problems. They have accepted the responsibility to propose. Now they will need to learn how to persuade.”