Base sends GOP warning shot in NY-23 - Jonathan Martin and Alex Isenstadt - POLITICO.com
At issue is whether the GOP next year will be able to channel the electricity now coursing through the conservative grassroots to fuel Republican candidates or if the fervor that’s propelled Hoffman to the precipice of victory in a district he doesn’t even live in will continue to divide the party’s pragmatic and right wings.
“Over the long term, if we keep dividing up it may cost us,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia moderate who helped build the GOP House majority as NRCC chairman. “You’ve got to stay under one tent and that’s got to mean accommodations on both sides.”
Former New York Rep. Tom Reynolds, also a previous NRCC Chairman, said that, inevitably, the party would need to run moderate contenders if it wanted to regain the majority.
“The question is, what is the future for moderates? We will have a future.”
You knew it had to come, didn’t you? Hoffman, “who doesn’t even live in the district,” wins, so that means the GOP “will have to run moderates in the future.”
If you define “moderate” as anything even remotely approaching Dede Scozzafava, then you will lose, and you will never “regain the majority.”
You GOP center left moderates do have a future - on the right wing of the Democrat party. We’ll take the conservatives and libertarians as your replacements. (via Stop the ACLU).
UPDATE: By the way, permit me to translate this for you:
At issue is whether the GOP next year will be able to channel the electricity now coursing through the conservative grassroots to fuel Republican candidates….
Reformulated for honesty, it goes:
At issue is whether the GOP next year will be able to channel the electricity now coursing through the conservative grassroots to fuel Republican candidates…whom those grassroots loathe, but whom the elitist establishment GOP (and the Democrats) love and will try to foist on them anyway….
Submit to Stumbled Upon!
What a distinctly false and tone-deaf dichotomy - implying, it would seem, that Hoffman’s support base springs entirely from that “right wing” (for which read: “radical extremists”); as differentiated from those “moderate pragmatists” - you know, all those lovely folks who’ve been doing such a great job, supporting people like Scuzzyflava (and mostly losing elections, as a result)…
Another tone-deaf and bone-headed premise - one having no discernible factual basis whatsoever.
The GOP “Leadership”: Still Stupid After All These Years
Reformulated even further: “At issue is whether the GOP next year will be able to manipulate and hornswoggle the conservative grassroots — again — to fuel liberal candidates…”
In all the Newt-style handwringing over the absolute impossibility of conservatives ever being elected to anything, there’s one thing I have yet to see addressed by anybody. Liberals (and, usually, “moderates”) vote only for liberals, and nobody expects them to do otherwise, or even suggests that they ought to. So why is it such an outrageously outrageous outrage, an outright crime almost, for conservatives to say they’ll vote only for conservatives? Why is it always, always, ALWAYS conservatarians who are expected to “reach across the aisle,” “work with” their opponents, and compromise their principles?
Do the handwringers really believe limited-government principles are that toxic and unpopular? Does the relentless drumbeat of the liberal media have them that cowed? Have they internalized the (admittedly ubiquitous, and therefore not always easy to resist) Leftist propaganda that completely?
Well, they’ve bought that, and also bought into the idiocy of “rational ignorance” (which is still ignorance, by the way, you ignoramuses!), and into the equally pernicious and false notion that your individual vote does not, and cannot, count for anything. (The Paradox of Voting - which is erroneous in itself).
These are all tenets of the Socialist left, which doesn’t want you to vote or otherwise participate in your own governance at all. Because the heart of socialism is this: The government must do, and control, everything.
Where is there room for you in that?
And I do wish conservatives would stop pushing some of these notions. They are all horseshit.
I had seen the “Hoffman’s not even a resident of the district” complaint before, as well as a claim that it was just because of gerrymandering; however, the claim didn’t give a link to a map of NY-23. I wasn’t sure if I should believe it, and I was too lazy to see if it was true. I’m feeling less lazy now. Hoffman is apparently from Lake Placid, which is surrounded by about 330o of NY-23. It shows up on the map I linked if you increase the magnification.
Oh, and I could tell that you weren’t complaining above, but merely referencing the complaint; I just hadn’t seen it dealt with on this site before.
SCOZZAFAVA THROWS SUPPORT TO OWENS
(Via Ace)
Her endorsement means nothing. The voters that will vote for the Dem would have done that anyway once she was out of the way. The ones that were holding their noses will not vote Dem. And some Dems will sit it out or write-in rather than vote for a candidate a Repub endorsed.
BTW. This is a good example of dog-in-the-manger syndrome. Dede blames Hoffman for her shortcomings.
And one question. Was D D her grade point average?
Boy, I’m sure glad that the smart set in GOP expended all that effort and money to elect someone who just endorsed the Democrat in the race.
Dede has moved beyond mere RINO-hood. for any practical purpose she is and has been a donk. Nice going GOP insiders.
What is the name for somebody beyond RINO?
Oh, I can’t wait for Newt’s reaction to this.
I think Newt’s ill-advised foray into this race has sealed his irrelevancy in the remake of the GOP. Who would listen to him now?
New York politics is nothing if not interesting. There was this from the Independent Party that endorsed “Double De.”
Even the Independent Party is not sure what to do: