Bob McCarty Writes

During an appearance Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program with host John King, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) demonstrated that he just doesn’t understand what happened in New York’s 23rd Congressional District over the weekend.

In case you missed it, liberal Republican Party-endorsed candidate Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the race after a groundswell of grassroots activism gave Doug Hoffman, a conservative rejected by GOP officials in the state, a huge bump in the polls during the past week.

At the 11:10 marks of the video above, the following exchange took place, convincing me that Boehner doesn’t get it:

KING: I want to talk to you about politics. You would like to be the next speaker of the House of Representatives. And while much of the attention on this year’s elections are on the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, there’s a special election in New York state. I’m going to hold up the newspaper. This is the Syracuse newspaper. You see “One out, two left in battle for 23rd.”

It’s the 23rd district and the Republican Party’s endorsed candidate, Dede Scozzafava yesterday withdrew from the race. You endorsed her. She was the party’s nominee. But she withdrew from the race after Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Alaska, the current governor of Minnesota, two people who might want to run for president some day, and other conservatives jumped in and said she’s not good enough, she’s not pure enough to be a Republican.

Can you be the speaker of the House, can your party survive in this part of the country if things like this happen?

BOEHNER: Well this is a pretty unusual situation. You had seven county chairmen who chose Dede to be our nominee. And clearly, she would be on the left side of our party, a conservative decided to leave the Republican Party and sign up on the conservative party ticket, which is allowed in New York.

And what’s happened over the last several weeks is her numbers have continued to slide. Hoffman, Doug Hoffman, the conservative party candidate, his numbers continue to grow. And so Dede yesterday decided to withdraw from the race.

BOEHNER: This is a pretty unusual circumstance, that we see in New York.

KING: But does it not send a signal? Your friend and former House speaker Republican Newt Gingrich said, if this happened, it would be a purge of the Republican Party.

This is what Chris Van Hollen — obviously, he’s a Democrat and your colleague in the House. He’s chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He says, “The far-right tea-bag party is leading the Republican Party around by the nose.”

BOEHNER: Now, listen, we accept moderates in our party and we want moderates in our party.

Boehner’s comments run contrary to those of individuals I’ve interviewed at the anti-socialism rallies in O’Fallon, Mo., during the past five weeks clearly are not in favor of moderates.  To the contrary, most of the people I’ve spoken with say they are less concerned about the letter an elected official has behind his name than they are about the willingness he shows in governing by the Constitution.

If, aside from all other things, Boehner and his colleagues in the Republican leadership fail to grasp this concept, they should expect to see more races in 2010 to take turns like the one in Upstate New York Saturday.

Transcript above: CNN.