Still A Win For Conservatives
Nov 4th, 2009 by Frank Knotts
In the much watched race for the 23rd Congressional race in new York , the Democrat Bill Owens has beat out the Conservative Party candidate , in a race that had more turns than a NASCAR road course.
First the GOP puts up a liberal candidate, then the Conservative Party puts up , well , a conservative candidate. Then the Republican Dede Scozzafava drops out of the race and throws her support behind the Democrat Owens.
Okay so along comes election day. And the winner is Owens the Democrat, by 49% to 46% for the Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and wait some of those well informed lock step GOPers up in New York gave 5% of the vote to the Republican Scozzafava who had dropped out. Do the math folks, how different would it have been if Scozzafava had endorsed Hoffman, but even so if the voters that voted for a dropped out candidate ,had sense enough to vote for someone still running it may have gone differently.
But no matter what if. This race still demonstrates that there is a move towards conservatism, especially when you couple it with the two races in Virginia and that liberal bastion New Jersey, and yes I said “BASTION” . In this race for the 23rd , in a special election , a short run up, and confusion a plenty, the conservative in a third-party still garnered 46% of the vote. Not too shabby!
Regardless of whether Scozzafava endorsed Owens, it boggles the mind why NY voters would vote for a candidate who dropped out. By voting for Scozzafava, they gave the election away to Owens.
Wake up NY!
Obviously Hoffman wasn’t a real conservative.
“Obviously Hoffman wasn’t a real conservative.” – noman
Or the voters for Scozzafava were liberals.
A 3rd Party candidate got over 40% of the vote AFTER Scozzafava spent $800k destroying him…
And he was an unknown regular guy. He started as a COMPLETE irrelevant 3rd party candidate and he FORCED the REPUBLICAN to drop out.
Conservatives showed the GOP that “party politics” is over. The same will happen here.
Applying Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation is teabaggers pushed the conservative needle into the red, and delivered a whole district full of lifelong Republican voters to Democrats. Everything else is just spin.
A man with zero charisma, who doesn’t even live in the district walks in off the street thirty days before the election, to run as a third-party candidate, and he loses. Wow.
Anyone care to bet who wins that seat next November? Owens will hold the seat for exactly one year- big deal. I’ll take the governorships of VA and NJ, any day.
“A man with zero charisma,”
After seeing a couple of interviews I do have to agree with that assessment.
Obviously, the votes already cast by mail before the change and the Dede robo calls had some effect. I think it comes down to the fact of get out the vote. It is hard to get out the vote for a third party candidate because there is no machinary and there was no time to id the voters so some of the voters you did turn out may not have been favorable while you left out some who would have been.
I would have loved a win, but Frank is right that it shows a symbolic victory. It took the entire whitehouse, liberal media trying to make this about moderates instead of liberals (which it was not), a million dollars of negative ad damage from our own NRCC, and a Judas, Brutus, Arnold type in the midst. Yet, Hoffman still almost pulled it off. He showed that a conservative Republican even himself would have won the race in the first place.
It was a good day. It also shows that we can not fight each other after the verdict is in. In NJ, the moderates also had a candidate, Daggett who threatened to pull a lot of votes, but Whitman, Kaine, and Gulilani all came out during the weekend and said get behind the guy who can win. From the right so did Lonegan and others. That is the model. We need to fight for all we are worth in the primaries, but once it is settled.
In NY 23 that couldn’t happen. Rather than allow a conservative victory the liberal dropped out and backed the liberal. That was not making much of a difference until the media committed the lie that this was about forcing moderates out and that moderates needed to be scared. That is why I took time to outline her extremist positions. The only thing moderate about her was her hairstyle.
“…who doesn’t even live in the district…”
Huh? I don’t know where this carpetbagger meme came from but it’s complete bunk. Doug Hoffman grew up in Saranac, attended North Country Community and SUNY Plattsburgh, his CPA office is in Placid, and so is his family’s real estate office.
Fair enough, just a rumor I guess; but, I think everything else is true….it all got started too late. Nevertheless, I expect he (or some Republican) will re-take the seat in ’10.