And Up Is Down

I was waiting for someone within the fringe conservative movement to completely invert reality in reference to NY-23.

Erick Erickson @ REDSTATE claims that Hoffman's loss is actually a big win for conservatives. No, really.

First, the GOP now must recognize it will either lose without conservatives or will win with conservatives. In 2008, many conservatives sat home instead of voting for John McCain. Now, in NY-23, conservatives rallied and destroyed the Republican candidate the establishment chose.

Actually, he's got this wrong.

Hoffman only succeeded in getting as many votes as he did due to receiving votes that Scozzafava would have gotten. Certainly he would have gotten the twitchy-wingnut-teabagger vote ( or would he? ) because he sucked up to the likes of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. And while Erickson could be only marginally correct in his assumption as to how victorious conservatives were in their assualt on Scozzafava, she was more Democrat that modern Republican anyway. So the more centrist/liberal voters were defaulted to Owens.

I have said all along that the goal of activists must be to defeat Scozzafava. Doug Hoffman winning would just be gravy. A Hoffman win is not in the cards, but we did exactly what we set out to do — crush the establishment backed GOP candidate.

That just doesn't make sense to me. It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Erickson is essentially claiming that the GOP losing a 100+ year Congressional seat to Democrats is precisely what they were going for. And the kicker within that statement is that he knew all along that Hoffman couldn't win, he was just willing to be an obstructionist. He was willing to do this even if his party were going to lose.

And make no mistake, despite the Beltway spin, we know for certain based on statements from the local Republican parties, that they chose Scozzafava based on advice from the Washington crowd.

And how does Erickson "know" this? Did he have someone steal another Roladex?

So we have demonstrated to the GOP that it must not take conservatives for granted. The GOP spent $900,000.00 on a Republican who dropped out and endorsed the Democrat. Were we to combine Scozzafava and Hoffman’s votes, Hoffman would have won.

It seems that Erickson has issues with somenoe within the GOP quitting. Perhaps he's forgotten what his girl Sarah did over the summer. And to rationalize your poorly constructed thesis by tossing out the "what if" card is equally as pathetic, as there is no way that all of Scozzafava's supporters would have voted for a character like Hoffman.

Secondly, and just as importantly, there has all of a sudden been a huge movement among some activists to go the third party route. We see in NY-23 that this is not possible as third parties are not viable.

Third parties lack funding and ability for a host of reasons. Conservatives are going to have to work from within the GOP. The GOP had better pay attention.

So Hoffman was just a pawn in the conservative's game, wasn't he? You see, Erickson realizes that people like Hoffman won't, can't, and never will win, but they are going to continue to cut of their own noses just to spite those within the GOP that they take issue with. There is no clearer picture of a fracturing Republican party than what was just stated her.

For all intents and purposes, NY-23 is a trial run for Florida. And in Florida, the conservative candidate is operating inside the GOP. If John Cornyn and the NRSC do not want to see Florida go the way of NY-23, they better stand down.

What does that even mean, "operating within the GOP"? Does it mean that the candidate there is a blend of Hoffman and Scozzafava? Does it really mean anything, as Erickson and his mouth-agape zombies will rail against anything if it means that they will have to have common ground with Democrats. They did a great job of mucking up NY-23, so I say let them have a crack at Florida, it would be a win for us.