News keeps breaking from the NY 23. This time it from TCOT report as recorded by Michael Patrick Leahy:
We acted very tone deaf in how we selected this nominee.”
Joseph also took a shot at Clinton County Chairman and Assemblywoman Janet Duprey, who threw the nomination to Scozzafava despite the fact that the majority of the Clinton County committee members who attended a candidate forum voted for the ideologically conservative Paul Maroun, and not for the ideologically liberal Scozzafava.
“I would be as much offended if I was a resident or committee person of that county. This process, that started in an honorable fashion has turned into a tainted runaway election.”
Joseph conceded that because of this, Scozzafava is almost certain to lose the election.
It’s looking a lot like some local GOP people decided to flex the muscles because they could. The damage this is going to do to the party nationally can’t be overestimated, but then again this might be a feature rather than a bug to these guys who are more interested in their own fiefdoms.
Meanwhile Robert Stacy takes a few minutes away from the desperate fight to contain the Flemish Menace to attempt to get the funds to head a bit closer to my neck of the woods.
Right now, I’m on deadline for a Wednesday column about the NY-23 special election. Dick Armey’s going to be campaigning for Hoffman on Thursday. So I plan to leave either late Wednesday or early Thursday to cover it in person. Your continued generosity to the Shoe Leather Fund is necessary to this effort.
Meanwhile he writes the following for the spectator:
However, Hoffman is battling against major party candidates, with the national GOP spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for Scozzafava — angering conservatives like Michelle Malkin — while the Democratic Party pours cash into the campaign coffers of its candidate, Bill Owens.
With high-profile supporters including Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Bill Kristol and the Club for Growth, the Hoffman campaign has become what John Gizzi of Human Events calls a “national conservative crusade.”
Conservatives have had their eye on the Hoffman campaign for weeks, but now major national media are finally taking notice. “The race the nation should be watching is a special election in upstate New York,” Newsweek magazine’s David Graham wrote yesterday, saying the outcome would show “whether Democrats can hold on to voters who went for Obama in 2008.”
This is actually going to show nothing of the sort as the Democrat candidate is unlikely to break the mid 40’s if he is lucky but it will certainly be a referendum of the NRCC and on Newt who appears to think that the majority of the sales of his new book (my review here) are going to come from NRCC mass purchases than from conservative history buffs or he just wants to keep his viability for income as a party pundit (that’s what many candidacies are actually all about.) hey it’s a living.
Fred Thompson has other sources of income so he is less resistant to picking sides based on conservative beliefs.
The real question is will Rush or Palin risk capital on this race that in the end means very little although it will be used a a propaganda victory for the Obamacult, but if Palin is interested in making trouble for Romney and Paulenty she can come out for Hoffman. That will put them in the uncomfortable position of either joining her (and having them appear as followers) or supporting Dede (and making particularly Paulenty unacceptable to conservatives, Romney is already iffy) or not being willing to stand up for anything.
The party make a bad investment in NY and their stock is crashing. Apparently they’d rather lose their stake then re-invest in Doug Hoffman. What fools.
However it turns out it won’t be boring.
