Bravo, Laura Ingraham. Boo, Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity
The truth is that the insightful Ingraham was right from the start, the feisty Palin made an understandable mistake and then shamelessly stayed the course instead of owning up to it, and Hannity was AWOL in the battle in NH.
There is a huge lesson for conservatives to be learned from the New Hampshire Senate Republican primary.
In a field of seven (six men, one woman), the race came down to a choice between insurgent, anti-establishment solid conservative Ovide Lamontagne and Kelly Ayotte, a former New Hampshire Attorney General whose had been appointed to that position by both Republican and Democrart governors and who inherited the case that challenged the constitutionality of the New Hampshire's now repealed parental notification statute, lost in the federal appellate court, won a remand on remedy in the United States Supreme Court and then ran for Senator as the winner of the case even though she had quietly approved a $300,000 payout to Planned Parenthood after a federal district court rejected United States Supreme Court precedent and erroneously ruled that Planned Parenthood had been the "prevailing party" (a legal term of art) in the case.
Ayotte was the candidate of the national and New Hampshire Republican establishments.
Ayotte was NOT an ardent conservative.
Any doubt of that should have been eliminated by Ayotte's videotaped declaration that she would have supported the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor as a United States Supreme Court Justice.
Radio and tv star Laura Ingraham IS a true conservative.
Last December, Ingraham interviewed Lamontagne, showered him with sincere praise and described him--RIGHTLY--as "the only true conservative in a very important race."
Lest there be any doubt, Ingraham reiterated her full support of Lamontagne a few months ago.
New Hampshire is the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state, and so former Alaska Governor chose to make a Facebook endorsement.
Amazingly, the maverick who came to fame by challenging the Republican establishment in Alaska turned away from the New Hampshire Tea Party favorite, Lamontagne, embraced Ayotte as a fellow "Mama Grizzly" and lauded her as a fighter, citing her Supreme Court "win."
Perhaps Palin thought Lamontagne was not a viable true conservative. If so, she guessed wrongly.
Perhaps Palin didn't want a "Papa Grizzly." If she did, Lamontagne would have been her man in New Hampshire. He's as protective of life as it gets, respecting the right to life from conception to natural death, and much more so than Ayotte, who favors the misdescribed "medical emergency" loophole used to permit abortion in the absence of risk to the life of the mother.
Bottom line: Palin made a huge mistake.
As Lamontagne surged and the New Hampshire press finally noticed and reported that $300,000 Planned Parenthood payout, it was obvious to anyone who examined the facts that Palin had made a mistake and had the chance to distinguish herself sharply from President Obama by admitting and correcting that mistake.
Instead, Palin did a robo-call for Ayotte actually describing Ayotte as "the true conservative in the race."
The true establishment candidate, yes.
The true conservative?
Certainly not.
Sean Hannity, whose latest book is titled Conservative Victory and who is the conservative with the best tv show and second only to Rush Limbaugh in national radio audience, helped Tea Party favorite O'Donnell upset Republican establishment candidate Castle in the Delaware Republican Senate primary, should have weighed in on the New Hampshire race, but passed on the chance to opine on whether Ingraham, a Dartmouth graduate who knows New Hampshire, or Palin, an Alaskan likely to visit it in the next couple of years.
It was a no-brainer, Sean.
General statements that we need to elect conservatives, not RINOs, are not enough.
Control of the United States Senate. That's even more important than helping former British Prime Minister Tony Blair sell his book or former New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani reminisce about his best days.
The truth is that the insightful Ingraham was right from the start, the feisty Palin made an understandable mistake and then shamelessly stayed the course instead of owning up to it, and Hannity was AWOL in the battle in NH.
Ingraham did all she could. Palin and Hannity needed (and need) to do much better.
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.