Saturday’s big news is that liberal Republican Deirdre Scozzafava has dropped out of the race for an upstate New York House seat. Scozzafava, under pressure from a third party candidate, did not want to place third and become a kingmaker for her ideological peer, Bill Owens. Without a wedge in the Republican base, the race will likely go to the Conservative Party’s Douglas Hoffman. The New York Times, in its typical front page editorializing, frets that Scozzafava’s departure will “embolden” the right wing of the GOP. Unsurprisingly, the NYT misses the point entirely; the Scozzafava turmoil represents principled voters’ revolt against corrupt GOP leadership more than any comment on a socialist President.

As is the practice in New York, Scozzafava was selected to run on the GOP ticket by a panel of party bosses, not by a primary election. Though she was unanimously approved by the panel, Scozzafava hardly reflected mainstream GOP views, even by New York standards. She sat to the left of many Democrats by supporting abortion, higher taxes, union power grabs, and gay marriage. Her backers apparently assumed that because Pres. Obama had won in 2008, that the district had therefore moved left and demanded a liberal Republican.

As today’s news made clear, voters had not fundamentally changed their views. Hoffman quickly became a contender, racking up endorsements from national figures like Gov. Palin and Gov. Pawlenty. Once Hoffman became more than a protest vote, Scozzafava’s financial support eroded, forcing her to drop out. All this is good for everyone except neo-con political bosses.

While traditional GOP leaders have debated whether the party should turn left in the Obama age, grass roots voters have made their views abundantly clear. The massive tea-party movement of the past year has shown what voters want: less government corruption and overreaching. Tea-party voters do not reflexively identify with any political party, but they reject today’s obscene spending, corruption, waste, and socialism. They do not long for the return of GOP dominance, indeed they are fed up with the GOP’s brand of corruption and waste. They, naively, want a stop to the Washington game of influence pedaling and pandering to special interests.

Back to the New York House race, where political bosses thought a leftward shift was the path back to political relevance. Scozzafava’s implosion shows that voters did not abandon their overall center-right views, the GOP leadership abandoned them. Voters kicked Republicans out of office because they had become just as corrupt as the Democrats they ousted in 1994. By standing for nothing other than entrenched power and statism, the GOP became indistinguishable from the Dems. To be sure, the Democrats have misinterpreted the 2008 election as well, claiming a mandate for a radical leftward shift. Not to crush Obama’s ego, but any Dem could have defeated the GOP’s amorphous prune of a candidate.

On Tuesday, the GOP will likely count victories in New York (indirectly), Virginia, and probably New Jersey, but the backroom bosses should not toast themselves too heartily. Most likely, the victories will be due to a Dem Backlash, not a new GOP direction. Even though the Dems will likely lose, the Scozzafava debacle shows that the GOP brand by itself has no power. The New York House race shows that the GOP can only regain relevance by abandoning its power-at-any-cost tactics and standing for the principles of limited government and free markets. If the GOP knows which way the wind is blowing, Tuesday’s likely victories should not delay a desperately needed soul searching and house cleaning.

Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly can be an irritant to all with his bombastic populism, but he remains the most popular cable news figure. Still, people should think twice before siding with him or believing he sides with them. O’Reilly is both a conservative and a collectivist, but never a freedom lover. A recent diatribe against John Stossel confirms that O’Reilly plays both sides because he loves himself more than anything else.

O’Reilly welcomed Stossel, a great force for personal freedom, to his show and immediately beat him up over his libertarian views on the drug war. Using his well-worn tactic of interrupting his opponent right as he gets to his main point, O’Reilly concluded that because some people beat their wives when on drugs, drugs must remain illegal. As is typical of Republicans and Democrats, but rarely libertarians, O’Reilly often substitutes a public policy argument in place of an individual rights argument (e.g. Socialized medicine costs too much vs. socialized medicine is an extra-constitutional abuse of power).

O’Reilly, along with most drug warriors argues that because some people abuse illegal drugs and cause trouble for society, everyone must be banned from their use. The families of Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe took little solace knowing that they died from the abuse of legal drugs. Jimi Hendrix and John Belushi are equal in death, even though their abuse was illegal. Considering the wide availability of both government sanctioned and banned drugs, O’Reilly’s suggestion that decriminalizing banned substances would increase social turmoil is implausible. If tomorrow, drugs were legalized like tobacco and alcohol, expect a giant wave of status quo.

Further, the argument that drugs have no use in society is bunk. Essentially, Marinol is the same as pot, Ritalin is the same as amphetamines, OxyContin is the same as heroin or morphine. MDA, known as ecstasy, has been shown to benefit post-traumatic stress disorder patients. The only difference is one form of these drugs is legal and the other is not. Is there really a difference between a bum with a bottle in the alley and Lindsay Lohan? If the only purpose of the drug war is to grant well connected drug users a veneer of propriety, O’Reilly’s arguments amount to elitism and self-delusion.

But doesn’t the prescription use of marijuana, speed, and heroin protect the end user? Doesn’t a doctor acting as a gatekeeper ensure only the proper use of drugs? Doctors prescribe any number of psycho active drugs to patients who feel anxious, depressed, and socially uncomfortable – many of the reasons illegal drug users get high. Doctors should be advisors helping people make their own decisions, but the government makes them gatekeepers of access to medicines and drugs. In every case, informed adults generally can make better choices about their lives than can governments and bureaucracies.

Back to O’Reilly, who wants to “look out for . . . the people.” What he means is substitute individual choice and responsibility for some sort of hybrid between government and O’Reilly himself. Most people neither need nor should want any form of big brother “looking out” for them. Since the active ingredients in pot, speed, and heroin have been proven safe and effective by the FDA, the only remaining argument is that people must be protected from their own potential for poor decisions. Without the individual freedom argument, O’Reilly routinely leans on the public policy argument, which is open to abuse and manipulation. O’Reilly pointing to anecdotal evidence of spousal abuse by drug users is the same cant as Pres. Obama citing .006 % of the population having been mistreated by insurance companies. There is always a sad sack story to support the need for regulation and control, which is why the public policy argument is usually weak and meritless.

All this leads to why O’Reilly felt compelled to brow beat Stossel, an employee of his own network. Fox News newcomers like Stossel and Glen Beck trade on ideas and principles. True, Beck may be a bit of a conspiracy nut, but the combination of his belief in principles and soaring popularity must worry O’Reilly. Beck and Stossel’s individualism is a direct threat to O’Reilly’s populism and ad-hock policy tirades. If Stossel achieves Beck’s success, expect O’Reilly’s ratings to take a hit as conservatives and libertarians abandon confrontation and ego worship for information and principle. It is well past time for people to realize that O’Reilly’s empire is built on a weak foundation; perhaps Beck and Stossel will cut him down a notch.

In the great tradition of Washington’s solving vaporous problems, Congress is moving on Net Neutrality legislation, while the FCC is also working on the very same issue with an eye to regulate and eventually strangle free speech on the internet. Net Neutrality, for those who have better things to worry about, is a proposal for the government to regulate internet service providers to force them to give the same priority to all types of data (i.e. an email transmission must be treated the same as a song download). The battle lines are drawn according to self-interest: content providers such as Google support Net Neutrality, while service providers like AT&T oppose being told how to run their networks. Considering the telecom industry’s record of self-serving lobbying and inappropriately close ties to its regulators, the fact that AT&T opposes Net Neutrality is no medal of valor.

While the cry to regulate the internet has come from Silicon Valley leftists for years, the movement crystalized in 2007 when Comcast internet customers reported that certain downloads were being slowed or blocked. Comcast denied all allegations, but it was later proven that Comcast was actively blocking certain software commonly used to share very large files. Silicon Valley leftists like Google’s Eric Schmidt demanded new regulation. With less fanfare, the FCC later found that Comcast had violated existing rules by not disclosing its filtering program.

Comcast blocked traffic because its bandwidth is shared among its customers. The incremental cost to transmit an extra packet of data is extremely small, but not zero. If a customer were to continuously upload or download huge files, he would reduce the service quality for regular users. Comcast clumsily blocked people who exchange movie files that can be several gigabytes long. Comcast’s error was in its method, not its intention to protect average customers from bandwidth hogs. With ever expanding applications for bandwidth, service providers cannot profitably offer unchecked access.

Why would Google advocate for Net Neutrality? Google is much more than a search engine. Google is seeking to dominate all aspects of internet content, including the high bandwidth applications of the future. Google wants a free media through which it can provide its high value content. Any restrictions on internet use, even if based on reasonable operating costs and the desire to provide good service, are a road block to content providers like Google.

For the vast majority of internet users, this is much ado about nothing. Only a tiny fraction of internet users consumes bandwidth like movie sharers. Many service providers cap their customers’ monthly data usage at 250GB, about ten times the usage of a typical heavy user, or 100 times that of a casual web browser and email sender. In short, the internet is already fully open without regulation. Google acknowledges that there is no current problem, but still seeks government intervention.

Aside from self-interest, why are giants like Google lobbying for Net Neutrality? Contrary to the spirit of Silicon Valley’s legacy of individualism and capitalism, the industry’s dominant players are lefties. They reflexively reach for government regulation and support at every turn. Even Microsoft’s leaders are lefties, and they were put through the screws by government prosecutors over purely partisan attacks by their competitors. As always, the well connected seek government protection from competition through ‘reform’ and ‘consumer protection.’

Worse still, Net Neutrality is a backdoor to regulating internet content. By establishing the FCC’s right to force the carry of certain content, Washington will open the door to regulating the priority of content (in the name of service quality). That is a slippery slope to regulation of all types of content, including videos of ACORN stings and Presidents screwing up their lines without teleprompters. Spkr. Pelosi is pushing her fairness doctrine to regulate the radio, the FTC has regulated blogs that seek to state certain opinions, and now the FCC is on the path to regulate video content on the internet. The Constitution is hanging by a thread from left wing attacks on the very liberties Democrats claim to support.

Just as socialized medicine will force healthy people to subsidize the sick, Net Neutrality will force reasonable internet users to subsidize those who wish to transmit terabytes of data. The end result for both industries will be mediocre service because service providers will be disincented to invest and innovate. Considering the internet works well for nearly every American, and many access channels are actually free, voters should reject yet another heavy handed government program that can only do harm.