Posted on 11/04/2009 2:54:16 PM PST by giotto
In New York's 23rd Congressional district, Democrat Owens finished with 49% , making him the winner of a plurality of the votes. What's being overlooked by Republicans and conservatives is that Scozzafava, despite having withdrawn from the race, still garnered 6% of votes, with Hoffman getting 45%. I'm guessing that most of Scozzafava's 6% were absentee ballots which had already been mailed before she dropped out. Other votes could have come from die hard fans of hers, or voters who simply didn't know she was no longer in the race.
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that Owens won with less than 50% of the vote, which means that a majority of voters did not want a Democrat congressman. In fact, there may have been Scozzafava supporters who voted for Owens in protest.
Today, for some reason, it's proving to be very difficult to find the actual percentages in this election. Most news stories simply say Owens 49%, Hoffman 45%--completely ignoring Scozzafava's 6%. Call it "spinning by omission."
Hoffman will take it next year.
Hmmmm...where’s the FUSION voting when you need it!?
This may be a case of better ‘rat than RINO but we’ll see how it plays out.
Were Scozzafava’s 6% all cast on election day?
When will the absentee ballots be added to the total?
You can’t prove all those votes would’ve went for Hoffman.
And considering the likely considerable amount of voter fraud...
Well, it couldn’t have worked out any better for them, could it? Whether those were all absentee ballots, or a mix of that and diehard Scozza fans, as I said on another thread, hardly matters, the margin of votes subtracting Scozza’s from Hoffman’s was 250, which means if Scozza’s votes were eliminated BY LAW, her NOT being a candidate,then Hoffman would have WON by 250. I will provide the link in another respone.
Good question. As I mentioned in my article, I suspect most of Scozzafava's votes were cast before she dropped out. Others possibly didn't know she had quit. But I'm sure there were many of her supporters who simply stayed home, rather than vote for a conservative. No doubt there are some conservatives who would have done the same, had Hoffman dropped out instead of Scozzafava.
Nah. The most you can make of it is 49% Hoffman, 52% Owens and -1% Acorn. ;^)
Oh--I thought they already had been added. If not, then that shoots my theory about how she got 6%, even though she wasn't running.
Unless he moves. Because of gerrymandering, he used to live in the district. Someone will get into the race. Doug Hoffman was one of the first to pave the way for more ordinary citizens to do their service. A true patriot!
Reading the Rat whiners they’re taking the NY-23 victory in favor of loosing NJ and VA - that’s like Hitler saying, “Well we lost Berlin but we still have the bunker” ....
And his race exposed the ways of the RINO’s, Newt, Steele, Mitt & Huckster.
Isn’t that great!?! We’ve been waiting years to have a conservative movement takeover of the GOP. Us diehards are going to have fun this year! I pray every night for God to show us the way. I think he’s heard our prayers! We can not let up now, it’s just starting.
Remember, seven of the machines impounded (Right!) in Albany, New York (Probably the oldest democrat machines in the country). The memory card were left in the machines as an oversight /s.
No, I’m wrong: the margin between the total votes for Hoffman and the total votes for Owens was 6317 votes, Owens of course having that many more than Hoffman.
Scozzafava garnered a total of 6567 votes, whatever source they came from, write ins , absentees, etc.
So SHE had a margin of 250 votes over Hoffman’s deficit relative to Owens.
There are a few ways to look at it. If you could eliminate ALL Scozzafava’s votes, as if a “nullification”,then Owens would still have beat Hoffman by 6317 votes, but as it is,
the triangulation created a situation of such messiness and outright treachery, that it’s impossible to know what the outcome would’ve been had she just dropped out and kept mum, and NOT directed her votes toward someone of the “other” Party.
The RNC Screwed this one up Big Time and let a Democrat get 49% of the vote and win a district that had been Republican for 140 years.
That’s right—suspect. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. My only alternative is to assume that 6% of Watertown’s voters were either clueless or vindictive.
Yes - and the tea party groups did amazing work this year. When we do something for our country, we get results!!
I so wish we had extra cash, I’d be in DC tomorrow. Now is not the time to think we’ve accomplished anything. It’s just beginning. We have to be relentless, and NEVER give up.
This loss was probably a good thing for the GOP. If you guys go to the extreme with this libertarian stuff, you are going to run a chance of getting clobbered in 2010 and 2012. And, if you do win by the negative reaction to Obama, you will find yourself hobbled by the philosophy that gov’t is supposed to sit on its rear end and do squat.
parsy, the democrat who is offering brotherly advice
Bill Owens Dem. 65,908 49.3%
Doug Hoffman Con. 60,442 45.2
Dede Scozzafava Rep. 7,385 5.5
Doug down 5466 w/96% reporting.
Didn’t the ROP buy these RINO Votes..7,385
And another lefty idiot offers great words of advice to the real conservatives at FR...oh no wait, its the same old lefty idiot. My mistake.
I’m guessing that most of Scozzafava’s 6% were absentee ballots which had already been mailed before she dropped out. Other votes could have come from die hard fans of hers, or voters who simply didn’t know she was no longer in the race.
I don’t think absentees were counted in the totals that has been given by the media. Concrete numbers are hard to find as you say. I’ve read reports that there were something over 10,000 absentee ballots requested and something just under 6,000 returned.
Most of the “real” conservatives I run into on FR aren’t “real” conservatives, they are “real” libertarians instead. For some reason, those kind of people seem to be real sensitive to anybody questioning their conservative credentials, so they like to throw “real” into their self-descriptions.
From little I read about Hoffman, he was conservative on some issues, but on economic issues he was pretty much another dyed-in-the-wool libertarian. But you guys can keep on ignoring me. I tried to tell you this back in 2001 and you didn’t listen then either.
parsy, the conservative who defected to the democrat party out of hopelessness about the GOP ever using its brain
Parsy, who probably has it wrong.
NEVER! Keep the heat on.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Pct. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner: Bill OwensBill Owens | Dem. | 65,908 | 49.3% | |
| Doug Hoffman | Con. | 60,442 | 45.2 | |
| Dede Scozzafava | Rep. | 7,385 | 5.5 | |
What an amazing man. He’s us, he’s just a regular American. He could have been any freeper.
Conservatives have brains and can think. Libertarians walk around in a mental muddle murmuring “no taxes, no gov’t, no regulations” under their breath.
Conservatives are appropriately pessimistic to not really trust anyone with power, the poor, or the rich, unions or management. Libertarians have had their minds washed by reading Ayn Rand and Von Mises, so they live in happy happy libertarian la la land, where if only the mean ‘ol gov’t would go away then we would all live in the Garden of Eden.
Conservatives look upon Wall Street the same way they look at welfare bums, as people who will screw you over if they get the chance. Libertarians OTOH look on Wall Street as heroic incarnations of Dagny, and John, and Hank, and that viking pirate dude...
Libertarians do not spank their children because that is the “initiation of force” whereas conservatives do not spare the rod, lest their children grow up and become libertarians.
parsy, who hopes this explains it
Libertarians walk around in a pot induced mental muddle murmuring “no taxes, no gov’t, no regulations, legalize drugs” under their breath.
I said this last night:
The margin of Owens victory over Hoffman is smaller than Scozzafava’s vote total. If the GOP had put a conservative up in the FIRST PLACE then the conservative would have been in FIRST PLACE.
Hoffman’s defeat is squarely in the lap of the moderate GOP and Newt the Nuisance.
Parsy, who really needs to get a better education.....
*Sigh*
That was very disappointing, I thought you could do better.
Parsy, who got burned by Rand, but still he doesn’t understand.
Great idea, let’s all work ourselves into a froth over our differences. Meanwhile, the left is closing in from all directions. I prefer not to use the terms liberal, conservative or libertarian. At this point in time, there’s only freedom lovers and fascists. There are those who cherish individual liberty and those for whom individual liberty is the greatest threat to their agenda. Let us stay focused on defeating the latter group, rather than wasting our precious time arguing the nuances of the first group.
You make a good point, BUT: If “conservative” candidates just parrot the libertarian economic nonsense, then “conservatism” is going down the tubes, at least on the GOP side of things.
The GOP can’t fix anything if they are delusional about what caused the problems. Sadly, even after Wall Street has screwed the country over once again, many conservatives haven’t broken free of their libertarian bias to get a grip on what happened. They want to blame the CRA and poor folks for all the problems and just blithely ignore overwhelming evidence to the contrary,
Try running a “conservative” candidate who tells the electorate that gov’t needs to cut back its expenditures AFTER the gov’t has spent trillions bailing out Wall Street. People aren’t going to buy that crap anymore. Sensible people on the right AND the left are fed up with business as usual. And the ones MOST guilty of toadying to Wall Street is the GOP. That is why McCain lost the election and why you have a liberal in the White House now. Who in their right friggin’ mind would trust a Republican to bust out Wall Street. Not me. And not enough people to push McCain into the White House.
And what is the right wing line on this? Well, that durn McCain is a RINO and if he had been more “conservative” he would have won. But what they mean by “more conservative” is really “more libertarian” and more against gov’t fixing problems they helped create.
Eight years ago I left the GOP (after 30 years) because Bush signed off that stupid Bankruptcy Reform bill that chose rich bankers, usury, and bad lending practices over everyday Americans who were were struggling trying to stay afloat. I came out on FR and did a post on it. March 15, 2001. Some people thought then, and now, that I am some kind of pinko but other people have caught on.
Karl Denniger over at Market Ticker dot com, and people at Naked Capitalism and even some at the Wall Street Journal itself are starting to question the “free market” paradigm as it has been used in this country. These people are not communists, or socialists, class enviests or even leftists. They are simply realists who recognize that the system is threatened when income and wealth inequality has gotten as high as it has and that when the average joe on Main Street feels like the system don’t work for him, we are trouble as a country. Mark Faber of the doom/gloom thing isn’t a closet commie. He realizes it.
The GOP has been way too easy on its candidates. All someone (typically a durn dumb*ss) has to do is come out with some Rush Limbaugh type strawmen and the GOP base starts having spontaneous orgasms. Let somebody say “we need to reduce the size of gov’t” and the GOP base starts drooling. Forget the hows,whens, wheres, etc. Then when they get elected, they are powerless. BECAUSE, the other thing they tend to believe is that gov’t can’t do anything right and shouldn’t even try in the first place. Put gov’t nihilists in power and don’t be surprised when squat happens.
I remember a freeper meeting I went to once where the local conservative candidate came to speak, and you might as well have been talking to an empty head. I was polite, and like I told the guy, I wasn’t there to debate him or interfere with his presentation, so I pretty much shut up. But all he did was trot out one strawman after another for everybody to go ga-ga over. It was pathetic.
Conservatives believe in limited gov’t NOT no government. Conservatives tend to think you can overdo anything, but that gov’t doing its legitimate job is a MUST. It is not optional. To not do your duty is called dereliction of duty, and sadly, that is where the GOP has been over the last few decades.
But when you look at it, NOT doing your duty in gov’t, is really a libertarian thing, not a conservative thing. This is why I keep saying, conservatives in the GOP need to purge their party of the libertarians, once and for all. If some clown can’t get behind social security, medicare, minimum wages, and other basic needed regulations, then what you are dealing with is really a libertarian, not a conservative. If a person believes in a “flat tax”, they are probably either a libertarian, or influenced by them. Hoffman, sadly, believes in a flat tax rate. Gee whiz, tell people in a depression that fairness dictates they pay the same tax rate as a Wall Street tycoon, and boy are you going to reel the voters in. (/s) sadly, the GOP is about one well spoken democrat away from permanent minority status. All, for that nincompoop 1%.
When they run on their own platform, as libertarians, they usually get about 1% of the vote. Whoopeeee! Keep them in the GOP and maybe you will eventually get down to that idiotic 1% level, too.
parsy, who just ate some grits and sausage and is going to try to go back to sleep.
For someone who criticizes other people's strawmen, yours are not too bad. You really need to get over to Mises.org to learn what libertarianism really is. The Wall St you are pointing to is mostly a mish mash of the Federal Reserve, big banks and bought and paid for politicians who all love deficit spending and loose credit. What Wall St is supposed to be is a place for long term investment with risk of failure. Instead it is all "risk free" carry trade thanks to the Fed and related speculation.
The article is pay, but the comments are free and are pretty decent Fears of a New Bubble as Cash Pours In
There’s a critical piece to the puzzle and you’re ignoring it. (Don’t overlook the big picture.)
One of the primary strategies of liberal activists is to create a wedge within the conservatives and attempt to drive it deep with misinformation. (These liberal activists fool themselves, thinking language can create reality.)
Whenever the supposed “rift within the GOP” is repeated, wisdom requires consideration of these underhanded, snivelling tactics. Tactics perpetrated by leftists whose greatest obstacle is the fact that the worthlessness of their ideology is most visible when it is viewed in plain sight.
parsy, who might not be aware of his own internal conflicts
If Hoffman didn’t have someone outside of every voting location with a huge sign screaming to everyone that entered that Scozzafava had dropped out than it’s his fault he lost. I’m sure a lot of people who weren’t paying attention voted the republican line but would have voted for Hoffman if they knew.
Bottom line is that it doesn’t matter. We just made the democratic party and worse yet Nancy Pelosi stronger.
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