Glenn Beck: And you win by 3 points? That's a victory? You've double‑teamed an accountant and you only won by three points. Boy, you guys are good... That's like the Yankees playing a high school team and winning by three runs. Oh, wow!
Here's what the Republicans should learn. The tea party movement, if you think you're going to run people that are going to be, you know, ACORN wannabes and they're just part of the corruption, part of the system, if you're going to run those people, you can expect a tea party guy to come out, and the tea parties, they'll help you lose every single election. ...So the Republicans have a choice to make. You can either spend a million dollars trying to destroy a third party accountant, or you could say, wow, this accountant probably would come in within three points of beating the Democrat if we combined our efforts, Republicans and Democrats, spent a fortune, had our candidate then drop out and campaign for the Democrats, we might be able to come in with about a 3‑point margin. You might want to just say, "Maybe we should go with the accountants. Maybe we should go with the regular people.”
Rush Limbaugh: See, this is the dirty little secret: If the party had gotten behind Hoffman from the beginning, he would have won going away. I have no doubt about that. I'll tell you something else. People are now talking about Hoffman's lack of charisma and familiarity with local issues. The huge story of New York 23 is the shambles the Republican Party made of it. They nominated a horrendous candidate: A liberal Republican. She was far more liberal than this Owens guy, who ended up winning.
Erick Erickson, RedState.com: This is a huge win for conservatives … 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.
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.
Haley Barbour, Republican Governors Association conference call: The media and the left, they want to act like there's some great war in the Republican Party between conservatives and moderates. They point to this deal in New York. The crime in New York State was that the state party chairmen allowed a handful of people to pick our nominee. Instead of a participatory process, the state chairman--who, by the way, has been replaced--turned it over to a handful of people. I woulda been mad too, if they tried to do that in Mississippi.
John McCormack, The Weekly Standard: Even if you're not generally a fan of the winning-by-losing theory, Republicans and conservatives really should be glad that conservative Doug Hoffman chased liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava from the field in New York's 23rd congressional district. Why's that? ... just imagine some crazy scenario in which Scozzafava had won this seat. What would have happened then? Her liberal record would have certainly prompted a bitter 2010 GOP primary that would have crippled the NRCC's and the RNC's ability to raise money. When it became apparent that she would lose, Scozzafava would almost certainly have pulled a Specter, as we had predicted a few weeks ago. A candidate willing to endorse a Democrat is more than capable of becoming a Democrat.
So thank Doug Hoffman for showing the GOP establishment that a conservative can win in upstate New York and for saving us from the disaster of Dede Scozzafava.
Karl, at HotAir.com: I always saw the NY-23 race as a sui generis clusterfark, so Hoffman coming up short did not exactly shock me.
Michelle Malkin: Better a donkey in office that acts like a donkey than a donkey in elephant’s clothing making a complete ass of the GOP.
The Editors, National Review: If there’s a lesson from the race besides the obvious — don’t let out-of-touch GOP officials pick liberal congressional candidates — it is that conservatives need to run campaigns based not only on their philosophical soundness but on the improved conditions that this soundness can be expected to generate.
C.K. MacLeod: As for movement conservatives still left with mixed feelings about what occurred, the lesson seems obvious, and is, I believe, already being absorbed: For the foreseeable future and on this side of the Apocalypse, the electoral action will remain in the R party of Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell – and Michael Steele and John Boehner and even Newt Gingrich – not in the fantasy 3rd Party of Glenn Beck’s musings or in the bloody shambles after a conservative night of the long knives. Big victories went to the unified party-movement – Virginia – not to the fractured party + movement in NY-23. For a Tea Party insurgency to start winning more often than spoiling, it would probably have to be around for a few years at least, not just a few months – and even then it would likely need a well-timed crack in the world or a civil war on the horizon to get the last bit of necessary oomph.
COMMENTS (6)
Let me see if I can unpack this.
Beck: "See, this whole time I was running a scarecrow. I didn't want to win--that's why I didn't invest my time and my networks in trying to win. I sent my proxies there to do my bidding because I planned this the whoooole time just so I could stand here right now and make this point with the Yankees metaphor."
Limbaugh: "I really am the titular head of the GOP, because I know all of their dirty little secrets, like the one about not really caring about this Hoffman guy because he was just a scarecrow this whole time, and we only thought of it in, like, the last second, because if we had thought of it, like, three weeks ago, we could have pushed this sc ... view full comment
Let me see if I can unpack this.
Beck: "See, this whole time I was running a scarecrow. I didn't want to win--that's why I didn't invest my time and my networks in trying to win. I sent my proxies there to do my bidding because I planned this the whoooole time just so I could stand here right now and make this point with the Yankees metaphor."
Limbaugh: "I really am the titular head of the GOP, because I know all of their dirty little secrets, like the one about not really caring about this Hoffman guy because he was just a scarecrow this whole time, and we only thought of it in, like, the last second, because if we had thought of it, like, three weeks ago, we could have pushed this scarecrow right into Congress, no question."
Malkin: "I actually do work for the GOP despite my extremist views and banal, cartoony figurative speech."
Karl @ HotAir: "I didn't watch this race at all, that's exactly why I'm not shocked, not shocked at all."
National Review: "The best way to run philosophically sound campaigns is not to associate yourselves with people like us... only let people know you are conservatives when they look at the ballot and see an 'R' next to your name. Anything beyond this level of fervor in your campaigning will remind people how philosophically unsound your ideas really are. We understand the Southern Strategy, and we will find a way out of this, you just have to trust us."
Sounds like some Republicans realize that you have to move back to the center to win in American politics.
But too many of them still think that it is better to be ideologically pure than to win elections.
So defeat is victory. Orwell would just love them.
Sounds like some Republicans realize that you have to move back to the center to win in American politics.
But too many of them still think that it is better to be ideologically pure than to win elections.
So defeat is victory. Orwell would just love them.
Rule number 1 for conservatives is that they're never wrong. Therefore if one of them loses an election it's because he/she was a RINO, oh and Bush was never one of us anyway and we never liked him.
Rule number 1 for conservatives is that they're never wrong. Therefore if one of them loses an election it's because he/she was a RINO, oh and Bush was never one of us anyway and we never liked him.
However, this was anything but a regular bee: in fact it was an elephant—as Alice soon found out, though the idea quite took her breath away at first. 'And what enormous flowers they must be!' was her next idea. 'Something like cottages with the roofs taken off, and stalks put to them—and what quantities of honey they must make! I think I'll go down and—no, I won't JUST yet,' she went on, checking herself just as she was beginning to run down the hill, and trying to find some excuse for turning shy so suddenly. 'It'll never do to go down among them without a good long branch to brush them away—and what fun it'll be when they ask me how I like my walk. I shall say—"Oh, I like it wel ... view full comment
However, this was anything but a regular bee: in fact it was an elephant—as Alice soon found out, though the idea quite took her breath away at first. 'And what enormous flowers they must be!' was her next idea. 'Something like cottages with the roofs taken off, and stalks put to them—and what quantities of honey they must make! I think I'll go down and—no, I won't JUST yet,' she went on, checking herself just as she was beginning to run down the hill, and trying to find some excuse for turning shy so suddenly. 'It'll never do to go down among them without a good long branch to brush them away—and what fun it'll be when they ask me how I like my walk. I shall say—"Oh, I like it well enough—"' (here came the favourite little toss of the head), '"only it was so dusty and hot, and the elephants did tease so!"'
So, Doug the Conservative now takes his place behind Joe the Plumber as but a mere footnote in the history of the Fourth Reich.
Others line up though to answer the call.
Even Beck, Limbaugh and Palin may just be footnotes in the short run.
But they're out there. Their time will come. The economy will collapse, the terrorists will strike, the potempkin village will burn to the ground.
Even Bilderberg may not be able to stop them.
george
So, Doug the Conservative now takes his place behind Joe the Plumber as but a mere footnote in the history of the Fourth Reich.
Others line up though to answer the call.
Even Beck, Limbaugh and Palin may just be footnotes in the short run.
But they're out there. Their time will come. The economy will collapse, the terrorists will strike, the potempkin village will burn to the ground.
Even Bilderberg may not be able to stop them.
george
Clearly the GOP never considered the biohazard dimension to electoral campaigning. NY's 23rd district is just too close to Canada, and the contagion factor of pragmatic thinking is quite high: it can get to Americans even though they wake up feeling fine. They imagine they are still party faithful, but by late afternoon they are voting for the Democrat and thinking that the Republicans have their heads up their collective ass if they think they are going to vote for a blow-in who takes four minutes to answer a simple question, badly.
Porous borders, guys, that's what it's all about.
Clearly the GOP never considered the biohazard dimension to electoral campaigning. NY's 23rd district is just too close to Canada, and the contagion factor of pragmatic thinking is quite high: it can get to Americans even though they wake up feeling fine. They imagine they are still party faithful, but by late afternoon they are voting for the Democrat and thinking that the Republicans have their heads up their collective ass if they think they are going to vote for a blow-in who takes four minutes to answer a simple question, badly.
Porous borders, guys, that's what it's all about.