Doug Hoffman Takes Lead in Poll
Take this with more than a grain of salt, since the Club for Growth supports him, but in the latest poll by the Club for Growth Doug Hoffman, the pro-life Conservative Party candidate in the special election in the New York 23rd Congressional District endorsed by Sarah Palin and other Republican Party luminaries, leads with 31.3% of the vote to 27% for Bill Owens the Democrat and 19.7% for the pro-abort leftist Republican Dede Scozzafava., with 22% undivided.
One of many good reasons why Republicans are bailing on Scozzafava is contained in the video at the beginning of the post which shows the remarks of Scozzafava upon winning a Margaret Sanger award.
Douglas Hoffman writes here as to why he decided to run. A better question would be to ask the Republican powers that be in the New York 23rd Congressional District how on Earth they ever thought that a candidate with the views of Scozzafava would ever be acceptable to most Republican voters. Maddeningly the Republican National Committee is pumping money into Scozzafava’s campaign and running adds against Hoffman. This is an excellent way to alienate the conservative base of the party. Idiocy, sheer idiocy.
Update I : A second poll has been released, this one by Neighborhood Research, showing Hoffman at 34%, Owens at 29% and Scozzafava at 14% , with Undecideds at 23% which tracks pretty well with the Club for Growth poll. I wonder how much more in Republican campaign contributions the Republican National Committee is going to squander in an apparently losing effort to elect a liberal Democrat in Republican clothes?
Update II: Dan Riehl here has lots of information as to how the Scozzafava fiasco came about.
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If anything Mr. Hoffman’s support has gone up. The question is, is it enough to lead the polls?
I’ll believe it when I see a more credible poll. Though a 5% margin of error isn’t bad for the Conservative Party candidate.
“Maddeningly the Republican National Committee is pumping money into Scozzafava’s campaign and running adds against Hoffman. This is an excellent way to alienate the conservative base of the party. Idiocy, sheer idiocy.”
THE GOP is doing what it is suppose too. At least some of them. The GOP is a party that has “moderates” too and we shall see what can of worms have been opened up by this.
The problem is in New York and people would be much better off changing the leadership there in the party. THE prob;lem is not the National GOP.
I hope I don’t wake up and see Republicans for Free Choice and the Olympia Snowes of the world campaigning for conservative yet pro choice “independents” against GOP pro-lifers we picked in our primary. If they do then a lot of people will not have a moral arguement against it
I think in the long run this will backfire but again the GOP has no choice here. Unless we are taking a stand that local control of the party should be micromanaged from Washington?
My Lord! No other phrase captures what I am thinking other than “Idiocy!” How could the republicans be stupid? This is a telling display of how the republicans are losing voters. Pro life is 98% of the reason I vote at all yet alone republican. I wish they would get that through their heads…
It sounds a lot like the kind of craziness the GOP pulled on Congressman Paul in the 14th District of Texas. In ’96 they recruited the DEMOCRAT to switch parties and run as the G.O.P. -backed candidate. Paul was able to survive into the run-off , and then won by simply reminding everyone how liberal his ‘establishment’ opponent really was.
If the Republicans insist on choosing ‘winners’ over their principles, I hope more and more people defect. They have not learned their lessons after 2006 and 2008.
Robert I agree with you in the need to keep the GOP as Pro-life as possible. But the problem here is not the National GOP but the New York GOP. Again do we really want the National GOP to decide what races it will fund and not fund. The local party in New York needs to change
jh is right. The national GOP cannot be expected to overrule the state GOP; that is just not realistic. NY conservatives cannot bolt from the GOP in favor of the NY Conservative Party and then feel entitled to get angry when the National GOP supports the GOP candidate over their own party candidate.
I’m nervous about the 23% that are undecided. Expect more of Scozzafava’s numbers to migrate to Hoffman and then hold your breath for the next 7-8 days!
The Republicans are showing their true colors – this is another momment of decision. Will the Republican party hold to authentic conservative and traditional values or will they be run by liberal, establishment Democrat-lite insiders?
This is not a political question – it is a question of culture. Are conservatives and traditionalists strong and principled enough to rout the liars or will we be left with the choice of speedy progressives and not-so-fast progressives again?
Goldwater, Reagan, Paul and Hoffman (and Palin) are examples of the people choosing principles over political-pragmatism. You can either change the Republican party or migrate to another. Perhaps the Conservative Party will grow and the Republican party die, or publically merge with the Democrats, rather than keep up the farce that they are two different parties. In fact, the Republicans and the Democrats are just slightly different factions of the same oligarchy.
NY conservatives cannot bolt from the GOP in favor of the NY Conservative Party and then feel entitled to get angry when the National GOP supports the GOP candidate over their own party candidate.
Once more with feeling. Mr. Hoffmann is an enrolled Republican. Ten county chairmen in the North Country selected Mrs. Scozzafava as a candidate by a weighted vote among themselves per the Election Law of New York. There was no petition process or primary. The North Country is not the east side of Manhattan or Westchester. Common-and-garden Republicans can and do poll well there. The county chairmen have been playing an obscure insider game and expected (as New York pols do) that the electorate would suck it up (as that electorate generally does if you do not poison the water table or forthrightly and transparently raise their property taxes). These ten individuals cannot legitimately complain if their own committeemen flip them the bird, much less if everyone else does.
Art, I agree, and admit that you have a far better grasp of the facts than me. My only remaining point would be that it is difficult to expect the national GOP to ignore or overrule the decisions of the local GOP, regardless the mechanisms or machinations behind those local decisions. It would be different if the national GOP were complicit in such insider games, but no one has suggested that, but instead some seem to want to count deference to local decisions as complicity. That just strikes me as unfair and unrealistic.