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With Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava suddenly dropping out of the 23rd Congressional District race in upstate New York yesterday, Election Day will see a battle between Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and Democrat Bill Owens. But Politico points out that people shouldn't have been shocked, "Over the past decade or so the New York Republican Party has emerged as the political gang that couldn't shoot straight, an operation so inept that it's sometimes hard to believe it exists in the nation's third-largest state," calling her campainn's collapse "an illustration of the utter ruin into which the state party has fallen. In just a few short years, the party's presence in state politics has dwindled to the point of extinction-or irrelevance."
Scozzafava was a moderate Republican who supports same-sex marriage and is pro-choice on abortion and was considered too liberal on fiscal matters; eventually the Republican party abandoned her. The NY Times reports, "As such, the contest on Tuesday could offer a test of the debate that Republican leaders are having: whether it needs to adjust itself ideologically to expand its appeal to places like New York." The Times adds that the 23rd District has been Republican since the 19th century.
PolitickerNY's Jimmy Vielkind also looks at Scozzafava's meltdown, especially how the National Republican Congressional Committee abandoned her. Bill Nojay, a conservative Republican talk show host in Central New York, said, "She was out of sync with a new evolving direction for the Republican Party both nationally and in New York State. When you have George Pataki endorsing the Conservative, that tells you that the most experienced Republicans recognize that there's been a sea change in Republican politics."
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The conservatives will blame this on Obama in:
3...2..1.
The GOP is bursting apart under the pressure of self-styled "conservatives" who insist on a bizarre right wing purity for admission into the fold. Scozzafava had the misfortune to be a moderate and a woman that isn't Sarah Palin. The Republican Party, which has now become the party of Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the aforementioned Palin, is grasping onto anything that will give it relevance. The contrived "movement" embodied by the Teabaggers is only the latest straw within their grip. What they don't realize is that it is they that are in the grip of the most virulent and intolerant wing of the GOP. It may attract more of the same but those that sane need look elsewhere.
Yep, That's their problem in a nutshell.
The far right in the GOP keep attacking any moderate and this meltdown is the result. The funny thing is, the GOP used to be the model of Party Solidarity. They used to all be on message (even if it was a f___ed up message) and band together. Now, thanks to Sen. McCain trying to appease the GOP far right, they are in complete disarray.
Scozzafava is not a "moderate", unless you use the DailyKos definition. She supports gay marriage, abortion, the stimulus, cap-n-trade, the public option, and card check. There isn't much on the Left's agenda that she didn't support. In fact, she was more liberal than her Democratic opponent.
The failure was in the GOP county chairs, who are the kind of nice people who do politics instead of the Rotary or the garden club. They didn't have a clue what cap-n-trade or card check meant on the national scene, and just thought of her as "our old friend Dede". There was no statewide GOP organization in place to put the brakes on, since Pataki basically destroyed it and no one had stepped in to begin the rebuilding. In short, it was a perfect storm that led to a far-Left candidate totally out of step with what the majority of Republicans, and voters in the district, wanted. Hoffman just happened to be standing there when he saw the accident happen and stepped forward to offer an alternative.
Well that's the whole issue, isn't it? That ideology is now far more important to the Republicans than their own power? They would rather abandon their own candidate - and guarantee their own loss of the seat - than have one more person who doesn't think gays are evil in congress.
"She supports gay marriage, abortion, the stimulus, cap-n-trade, the public option, and card check."
(sigh)
Even if all this is true (I'll take your word for it), all these *ARE* moderate positions.
Sorry S.D., but the only place on the planet those positions are "moderate" are the upper west side of Manhattan and greenwich village, certain neighborhoods of San Francisco, and possibly a few salons of Europe. The remaining 99.9 percent of humanity views them as liberal. Not that there's anything wrong with that, depending on your point of view, but if you think the rest of America views those positions as moderate, you need to get out of nyc a bit more often.
"The remaining 99.9 percent of humanity views them as liberal."
Um, No, not exactly. Big hint: The last Presidential Election.
"you need to get out of nyc a bit more often."?
Yep, That's me, I'm just a provincial bumpkin working in an international company with offices all over the US, EMEA, and APAC.
"Upstater51", maybe it's you that need to get out more.
Your comment proves the point. There is nothing out of the mainstream about any of those positions but all of them fail the right wing purity test. The other commenters are correct, the GOP is more worried about appeasing the far right than they are about winning elections.
Uh-oh, she just endorsed Bill Owens. Maybe Doug Hoffman can register enough woodland creatures in time for an election day surprise ( all except moose, of course ).