"It's not about ideology," Ms. Scozzafava said. "It's about the local issues."

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Well, now that Halloween is over - she decided to take off her mask.



And Newt is shocked by this!???

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Newt has turned to be something of a fucking idiot.

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RNC had nothing to do with choosing Benedict Scozzafava

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Mac:





Will you at least agree with me that if your ONLY viable candidate with an "R" is actually more liberal than Hillary Clinton, that you may be better off losing the district and working on hearts and minds?





Do you agree that having THIS PERSON as the swing vote only fucks you up again and again and again?

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Republicans who are pro choice, open borders pro Gay marrage, Brady bunch voters are not Republicans.

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RNC had nothing to do with choosing Benedict Scozzafava
 

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Absolutely correct, but that fact gets in the way of the 'GOP Hate' meme.

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If what I heard is correct, there was no primary. A group of state level Repubs cherry picked this jewel.

Am I correct?

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If what I heard is correct, there was no primary. A group of state level Repubs cherry picked this jewel.

Am I correct?

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Absolutely correct, but that fact gets in the way of the 'GOP Hate' meme.

A liberal Republican was driven out of the race for a vacant House seat in upstate New York by a surge in support for the Conservative Party candidate.

As a result, a political neophyte CPA running as a third-party candidate stands a good chance of getting elected to Congress on Tuesday.

Democrats say they’re thrilled.

The talking points already in heavy rotation say that a win by Conservative Doug Hoffman over Democrat Bill Owens will only encourage tea party populists to take on the Republican establishment. More primaries. Weaker general election candidates. Fewer Democratic losses in 2010.

That’s the way Obama political operatives are spinning the withdrawal of Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd District. They ought to know: It’s the same mantra that Democratic grandees used against Obama’s presidential candidacy.

Hillary Clinton’s surrogates said that Obama shouldn’t have even run because a primary challenge would divide the party and weaken Clinton for the general election showdown with inevitable Republican nominee Rudy Giuliani.

Obama correctly rejected that notion, saying that a contested primary would energize, not demoralize, the Democratic base.

Then, after Obama surged to the lead in the Democratic primaries, the Clinton team argued that Obama didn’t have the chops to take on the resurrected John McCain. An anti-war, community organizing liberal Democrat versus a war hero and moderate Republican? C’mon.

Many Republicans welcomed Obama’s nomination. What Clinton’s pollster Mark Penn called Obama’s “lack of American roots” and reputation as an arugula-munching, big-city intellectual would take states like Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina off the table, right?

Obama adopted a rope-a-dope strategy in the primaries as Clinton battled on into the summer of 2008 (Remember “Puertorriquenos con Hillary”?), but he never stopped being the liberal choice.

Obama beat Clinton for the same reason that Hoffman may win in upstate New York. He offered an authentic, passionate vision of his party’s core principles and did it in a way that didn’t make moderates uncomfortable.

The president may be something of a disappointment to liberals since taking office, but as a candidate he excited their ardor as Howard Dean once did. And it was the hard work and money of the Left that propelled Obama into the White House.

Hoffman, a successful accountant from White Plains, N.Y., sought the GOP nomination to run for the seat left vacant when Obama tapped eight-term Republican John McHugh to be secretary of the Army. But because it was a short-notice special election, the nomination was made by the solons of the dying Republican Party of the 11 counties in the district.

It rebuffed Hoffman in favor of Scozzafava, whose liberal voting record and high name recognition (she served as a mayor and in the state assembly) must have seemed like a good match for a district Obama had won narrowly the year before.

Super-square Hoffman had no political track record, and his positions are quite conservative: low taxes, less spending, opposition to global warming regulations, restricted access to abortion, etc.

It was as if the superdelegates had picked Clinton instead of Obama on the grounds of electability.

But Scozzafava was not electable, especially once the conservative movement got on to her scent. Leaders of the ACORN-affiliated Working Families Party may have thought they were helping Scozzafava by endorsing her, but voters were not impressed.

Soon conservatives across the country were pouring money into Hoffman’s race and scorn onto Scozzafava. Newt Gingrich and others who are Republicans before they are conservatives tried to prop her up, warning that the party must be respected and that liberal Republicans were still better than Democrats.

Complaining about the pressure from conservatives, James Ellis, one of the party chairmen who picked Scozzafava, told the New York Times, “It’s a detriment to democracy.” Since when did democracy consist of 11 party hacks meeting at Sergi’s Italian Restaurant in Potsdam?

Republicans such as Ellis and Gingrich think the Obama team is right that Hoffman’s success spells trouble for next year. They think conservatives will take over the party and drive out moderates.

But the lesson of the Obama ascendancy is that an enthusiastic base coupled with a reasonable-sounding candidate can win elections.

The GOP remains unpopular, and the movement against career politicians is real. If the party wants to maximize its gains in 2010, it will need to look more like Doug Hoffman than Dede Scozzafava.

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How did Newt not know there was a primary

 

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Good info.

A good analysis.

Conservative revolt good news for Republicans



A great interview with Haley Barbour on NY23.

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Sarah Palin smoked out a traitor to principle that is now a proven traitor to party.

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It is a good thing she has turned.  She will wake up the party; and the RINOs will now be a real issue instead of being swept under the rug.

The GOP remains unpopular, and the movement against career politicians is real. If the party wants to maximize its gains in 2010, it will need to look more like Doug Hoffman than Dede Scozzafava.

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If a single RINO gives the Republicans majority control in Congress - that's a good thing. And work harder on replacing the RINO next time.

Not all Republicans are RINOs, and to shut out all good Republicans from Chairmanship positions and majority status on committees just because one minor newbie is a RINO is not good planning.

I understand the "all or nothing" idea of voting purely on ideology rather than party, but sometimes that does put you into a deeper hole than voting for the RINO.

Sometimes.

In this case, it doesn't because the 3rd Party candidate is actually a VIABLE candidate, as opposed to the spoilers who pull 5-10% total in close elections, but split the vote enough to give the Dems another seat towards majority status.

Think of it like this - would voting for a single RINO over a clearly non-viable 3rd party candidate be worth it if it kept the likes of Barney Frank, Charles Rangel, John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi out of majority-control and committee chairmanships positions?


 

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Wrong.

Voting for a third-party Conservative on election day who never polled above 5% is stupidly suicidal.

Voting for a third-party Conservative who is BEATING the RINO and the Dem is the only smart thing to do.



 

Leaders of the ACORN-affiliated Working Families Party may have thought they were helping Scozzafava by endorsing her, but voters were not impressed.

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Yeah, because following the RINO line has done wonders for us over the past five years or so.

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How did Newt not know there was a primary

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The comments on Newts blog are classic.

Newt: I'm now endorsing Hoffman.

The race in New York’s 23rd Congressional District highlights the concerns many Republican voters have about their party leaders.

At a time when 73% of Republicans believe their party's representatives in Congress have lost touch with the GOP base, 11 county leaders in upstate New York picked a nominee for Congress who supported the Democratic president’s stimulus package, his health care reform plan and “card check” legislation designed to make union organizing easier. All three items are overwhelmingly opposed by Republican voters - and even by Republicans in Congress.

The decision by county GOP leaders to nominate such a candidate seemed almost designed to provoke the party’s core voters, and it did.

A Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, entered the fray and picked up endorsements from many leading national Republicans. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, urged voters to stick with the party’s official nominee. He said a decision by local party leaders was good enough for him, but most Republican voters don’t have such confidence in the party leadership.

This past weekend, the official Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the race in the face of falling poll numbers and lackluster fund-raising. Then she endorsed the Democrat.

As a result, the New York 23rd Congressional District race will end up being between a Conservative Party candidate and a Democrat. In many ways, that pairing reflects the reality of national match-ups more than the typical partisan competition. There are more conservatives than Democrats in America, and there are more Democrats than Republicans.

One reason for this is that while Republican voters overwhelmingly consider themselves conservative, only 56% of conservative voters consider themselves to be Republicans. In other words, nearly half of all conservatives nationwide reject the Republican Party label.

This means that Republicans looking to broaden their party’s outreach cannot ignore the need to attract a large number of conservative voters along with some political moderates. Of all the non-Republicans in the nation, 31% consider themselves at least somewhat conservative while 37% say they’re political moderates.

The sweet spot for Republicans are core issues that unify conservatives while dividing more moderate voters. One such issue is health care where conservatives are united in their opposition to the plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, and 37% of moderates are opposed, too.

Looked at from that perspective, nominating a GOP candidate who supports the president’s health care plan is likely to drive away more voters than it attracts. The same logic applies to the stimulus package, card check and other such proposals. That’s just what happened in NY-23. Nationwide, 42% currently support the health care plan working its way through Congress.

It should be noted that Democratic Party dynamics are entirely different.

While a plurality (44%) of Democrats are politically liberal, nearly as many (35%) are moderate. So Democrats must make compromises within their party before reaching out. Also, the pool of available non-Democrats is very heavily on the moderate side.

Just nine percent (9%) of non-Democrats are even somewhat liberal while 29% are politically moderate. These non-Democratic political moderates are absolutely essential to Democratic candidates. That’s why Democrats are eager to suggest that situations such as NY-23 indicate a GOP rejection of moderates in favor of extremists.

Interestingly, while Republican voters say their congressional representatives are out of touch, a plurality (47%) of Democratic voters view their members of Congress as roughly in the same place they are ideologically. Just 27% say the average Democratic member of Congress is more liberal than the average Democrat, while 19% think the average Democrat in Congress is more conservative.

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Exactly.  I liked this line from one of the posted articles:



There's nothing to be gained by nominating career crony-network politicians.  The future of the GOP is with people like Hoffman, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, maybe some retired Generals like Petreaus and McChrystal.

It isn't with the fucking McCains, Specters, Snowes, Scozzafavas et al.

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Looks like _A friend of ours has been leaving comments on Newt's blog.

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As the command specialist major of the army, I am so much smarter than everyone else. I am a huge fan of a strong, fascist national socalist government. Someday I will bring the full force of my A-10 of justice against all gold owning, ron paul supporting rebel scum!

Dave_A  



––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
By Anonymous @ Monday, November 02, 2009 3:34 PM  
My name is dave_a and I approve this message

As a neocon and proto-fascist, I would like to take this opportunity to say how much I love the federal government and illegal aliens.  

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So true.

And Newt can shove the big tent up his ass.

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That's not funny in the least.

That's chickenshit cowardice by whatever assclown is doing it. It's no different than the stupid bastards who post Old Painless' personal information on fucking youtube videos.

The withdrawal of Dede Scozzafava from the special election for Congress in upstate New York has predictably set off another wave of media-led hand-wringing about the health of the GOP. (See here and here, for example.) These stories are like crack for reporters, especially those with a hard-left slant. It is always framed as a battle between ‘conservatives’ and ‘moderates,’ but the focus is actually much narrower.

To Big Media, conservatism comes in only one flavor, social conservatism, namely anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage and a smattering of other issues that would fall flat over canapés and seltzer (liberals don’t seem to drink anymore). That Dede was pro-choice and pro-gay marriage fits the narrative perfectly for the media. End of story.

But, the media, and political leaders would be wise to dig a bit deeper into the story. Yes, Dede was pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, but she was also pro-government spending, pro-taxes and pro-Big Labor, to name just a few other issues. When a Republican candidate regularly seeks out the endorsement of ACORN and wins the endorsement of DailyKos, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that large segments of the party might have some misgivings about supporting the candidate. (And they would be right, since she has now endorsed the Democrat in the race.)

The media and the national Republicans who backed Dede are furiously spinning her withdrawal as meaning that pro-choice and pro-gay marriage candidates ‘need not apply’ for the GOP ticket. The media is warning that, unless the GOP nominates, ‘moderates’ the public will reject the party’s candidates and condemn it to perpetual minority status. Right, the media is worried about this.  I find it is generally wise to be skeptical of advice given me by my opponents.

Both the media and national Republicans are overstating the relevance of social issues at a time when most voters are fearful about keeping their jobs. Many people may care about these issues, but they aren’t driving their political activism. An highly-energized large block of voters are actually really concerned that government has grown too big, too fast. They’re not clinging to ‘gods and guns’, as candidate Obama famously sneered; they’re clinging to their wallets.

Every year at CPAC, the annual conference of grass-roots conservative activists, they take a straw poll of attendee’s political views and priorities. One question asks whether the movement’s focus should be on “limiting the size and scope of government” or “protecting ‘traditional’ values.” For the last three years, attendees split roughly 50/50 on the question. This year, almost 75% of attendees voted that limiting the size of government was their top priority. Keep in mind, attendees at CPAC are generally the heart of the social conservative movement.

This year, the Washington Post—the most effective arm of the Virginia Democrat Party—thought it found the silver bullet to kill the gubernatorial campaign of republican Bob McDonnell. They unearthed a 20-year old thesis McDonnell wrote in college that contained some pretty embarrassing statements–at least by today’s standards—about whether, for example, families are better off if the wife doesn’t work outside the home. The Democrats based almost their entire campaign, and the Post based most of its coverage, on McDonnell’s thesis. It must chill them to the bone that McDonnell is set to win by one of the larger margins in state history. It isn’t that the public, or even McDonnell today, agrees with what’s in the thesis; they just don’t care.



The GOP ignores this lesson at their peril. It is entirely probable that, in today’s political climate, a pro-choice, pro-gay marriage Republican candidate who also opposed increased government spending, favored cutting taxes and rejected the demands of Big Labor would have romped to victory in upstate New York. Hoffman’s insurgent campaign wasn’t fueled by tapping into social conservatives, per se; it was fueled by tapping into the tea party movement. A movement that still perplexes the GOP, it seems.

Starting Tuesday, however, the American public is set to start handing back to the GOP huge swaths of political power. (I think it is better than even money the party sweeps VA, NJ and the special election in New York 23. Hell, they’ll probably even come relatively close in a special election for Congress in the San Francisco Bay Area!) I don’t think even the mandarins running the national GOP are incompetent enough to prevent this.

Well, actually, there probably is something they could do to prevent this; continue to misread the national mood and political zeitgeist. Just as generals risk fighting the last war, national Republicans risk fighting the last election cycle. I think the national party leadership, cocooned in DC, saw a district in upstate New York that was carried by Obama and then went searching for a Republican who was pro-choice and failed to look any deeper into other issues.  In other words, they took the advice of Big Media. I know from personal experience that the GOP in DC doesn’t fully appreciate the grass-roots movement that has erupted around the country this year. They continue to look through a political prism calibrated on one or two formerly hot-button issues. They don’t appreciate how much the political landscape has changed. That is the real source of their missteps in New York.

I leave to others the task of asking whether those responsible for the Dede campaign should be allowed even within the same time-zone of future political campaigns, but I think it bears repeating—perhaps screaming—that the GOP spent almost $1 million on a candidate who then proceeded to drop like a stone into third place. (She might have fallen further but for the fact that there are only three candidates in the race.)  It does not inspire confidence that these individuals are ready for prime time. Republicans are appropriately calling for audits of ACORN. They might want to audit the NRCC as well.

While piling on idiotic national Republicans is a fun parlor game, there is a lesson here for the tea party movement as well. Just yesterday I received an email from a congressional candidate who has decided to pull out of the GOP primary and wage a third-party ‘conservative’ campaign next November. This candidate is drawing the wrong lesson from New York’s 23rd District. First, New York has unique election rules that have allowed third parties to prosper. The dynamics in play in New York simply can’t be replicated elsewhere. There were many variables, beyond those that have been generally reported, that will make a repeat of the Hoffman phenomenon elsewhere difficult.

By forgoing a primary, this candidate is missing an opportunity to reform the GOP. Worse, by channeling the tea party movement into some kind of angry, Perot-inspired third party, there is a real risk that the left will get a reprieve from the voters’ boiling-over anger. Dede certainly deserved opposition from anyone who claims any belief in limited government. But she is also, likely (hopefully), a special case. The tea party movement should be careful, however, that it doesn’t evolve into some kind of politburo, forever patrolling for apostates and conducting purges. I’m a big believer in bitter primary fights, as long as the fights stay within the family.

Because, even if we don’t like it, the GOP is probably our last, best chance to reverse course and regain some personal liberty and economic prosperity. Maybe not the GOP as it is now, but as it was and could be again. I’m old enough to remember a time when the party had an institutional aversion to using government to ‘solve’ our problems. I remember when the party gave a lot more than lip-service to the notion that adults should be free to make their own choices, both for good and ill. I remember a time when Ronald Reagan said the heart and soul of the conservative movement was libertarianism.

The tea parties and summer townhalls have proved the public is ready again for this message. More than that, the public is demanding this message. They are far ahead of the national leadership of the GOP. (The national Democrats are simply hopeless and are marching lock-step into a political buzzsaw.) As in upstate New York, the public may even force the GOP to adopt/return to this message. Hopefully, the GOP will seize the opportunity that has been handed to them. Hopefully, the tea party movement will give the GOP the chance to do it. At the end of the day, the political enemy is over on the left.

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IMO, theGOP is behind this. They aren't afraid of Hoffman. They're afraid of Palins star power and PAC is he wins.

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That's not funny in the least.

That's chickenshit cowardice by whatever assclown is doing it. It's no different than the stupid bastards who post Old Painless' personal information on fucking youtube videos.

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That was a comment on his site. Not his. Apparently Scuzzy was indeed selected by the RNC...not by a reg primary...I'm looking more into this now.

ETA, see below. No wonder Hoffman didn't drop out. Yes, the RNC is completely responsible for this cluster-fuck.

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Fuck that. If the RNC did this, then the idiots responsible are just as much part of the problem as the democrats are and should be excised from the party like the cancer they are.