Most of you reading this now have heard that the erstwhile Republican in the New York Congressional District 23 race that had dropped out only yesterday due to a lack of support from conservative Republicans has now endorsed the Democrat candidate.(click here to go to story)
Dede Scozzafava, who had more left of center positions and than a mainstream Democrat candidate, demonstrated the rightness of the decision of national conservatives to endorse her opponent, a former Republican who could not run as such in the special election to fill a vacant Congressional seat as there was no primary allowed. The prior occupant, a fairly liberal Republican himself, was pulled from the seat by the Obama administration to be Secretary of the Army.
The local Republican party decided that it was best not to rock the boat and try and get a candidate, who would have thought Rockefeller was far too conservative, to try and run on the Republican ticket. State and local conservative activists got behind Hoffman, a local conservative who mounted what was for all intents and purposes an insurgent Republican bid for the position. Even with the extreme liberal Republican candidate receiving the endorsement of some Republican stars like Newt Gingrich, others like Sarah Palin begin push for Hoffman.
As support began to drain away and shift to Hoffman, Scozzafava pulled the plug on her campaign to avoid an embarrassment. And Sunday, just to show that the folks on the right were correct, she endorsed the Democrat candidate obviously in a fit of pique and retaliation.
If this serves no other purpose, it does demonstrate how she would have reacted in Congress and if she is not finished in the district as a Republican, Independent or Democratic candidate it would seem party officials and voters in that area would fall into a very gullible category and that doesn't seem to be the case.
There are big changes coming in 2010 and the Hoffman victory, which I predict will happen, is just the beginning.
