Posted on 10/31/2009 4:46:45 AM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
Think you are a cynic now, wait until you are sixty. :D)
With AIP, we adopted the Republican platform - specifically its heart, the Reagan personhood pro-life plank - since the GOP wasn't using it anyway.
Come on you guys.You’re realist.The world is out to get us.:)
Had there been a primary fight, Hoffman would have likely defeated Scozzafava and we wouldn’t even be talking about this.
That remains to be seen. True there was no primary and the candidate was selected via the proportional vote of the 11 county GOP chairs who had input from their committees. Only three of the nine wannabes got votes:
Scozzafava .. 48%
Doheny .. 23&
Maroun .. 27%
Other 6 .. 0%
In a primary with a large field depending upon how many of the nine got in it would appear to me that Doheny and Maroun would have been the most likely to defeat Scozzafava if it would have been possible.
Maybe he used to be a Republican, but the party left him so he was forced to run under the Conservative Party.
“Maybe he used to be a Republican, but the party left him so he was forced to run under the Conservative Party.”
Huh? He ws a republican until he ran and lost. The top 3 vote getters, which didn’t include Hoffman, in that flawed process got 99% of the votes. The Conservtive Party approached both the other 2 top vote getters and they declined running on a third party ticket so Hoffman was in by default.
Hoffman may win (and that’s still to be seen) and he may conference with the repubs, but when that interim seat comes up for election in 2012 you can be sure the local GOP will pick a new candidate (probably one of the 2 that lost to Scozzfava) and put in enough money to make sure he is soundly defeated.
Political parties don’t like traitors. Hoffman may be the obvious conservative candidate compared to Scozzafava but that mistake won’t happen again and Hoffman will be crushed in 2012 and all his vocal supporters on this site will no where to be found.
It’s complicated. The Goldwater Revolution never occured in NY, home of Nelson Rockefeller. The Conservative Party was formed to push consevrative candidates and ideals. However, those Conservative candidates who win on this line always caucus as Republicans. Most famously, Senator James Buckley did this in 1970.
The difference will be whether they are true third party candidates running out of concern for the country, or if they are DNC-sponsored plants, running only to confuse the electorate and siphon off Republican votes.
I suspect that the latter will become a trend, for several reasons.
1. In 2006, we saw the Democrats nationalize a strategy to run "conservative" candidates against Republicans in traditional GOP districts. That strategy worked.
2. We've seen candidates like Michael Bloomberg run on the GOP ticket because the Democrat ticket was already full. After winning on the GOP ticket, Bloomberg became an Independent.
3. A willing media will label DNC-backed third party candidates as "moderates," or "conservative-friendly," in support of this strategy.
-PJ
The democrat my congressman defeated in 06 is running as a republican now.
In fact, the republican my congressman defeated in the primary was once a democrat as well. He seems to be a democrat again because he endorsed the marxist against my republican congressman last year.
Lots of democrat games being played if you ask me.
Doing some digging and found that another Republican running for nomination in my district is the nephew of the Ambassador to Ireland appointed by Obama. Hmmmmmmm
The Huffington post says that he got the ambassador position after providing critical support to the Obama campaign.
I don’t know much about these guys but I’m not liking what I’m hearing. There are 3 brothers, one already a GOP congressman in Florida, another considering congressional run in another florida district, and the 3rd brother moved into my district to run.
Here is historian Michael Medved’s description of that history.
“2. NO, THE REPUBLICANS NEVER CONSTITUED A THIRD PARTY
Whenever I take the time on the radio to discuss the obvious and inevitable futility of minor party campaigns, some smug caller will try to play “gotcha” by reminding me that my own beloved GOP began its political life as a minor party, and managed to elect an underdog nominee named Lincoln in the fateful election pf 1860. It makes for a good story, and I know it allows misled minions to feel better to believe that it’s true, but the Republicans never operated as a third party. By the time of the first Republican County Convention (in Ripon, Wisconsin, on March 20, 1854) the Whig Party had already collapsed and shattered, hopelessly divided between its Northern anti-slavery branch and the Southern “Cotton Whigs.” Refugees (including numerous Congresmen, Senators and others) from the Whig debacle determined to fill the vacuum and, joined by a few anti-slavery Democrats and former Free Soilers, they launched their new national organization.
The first time candidates ever appeared on ballots with the designation of the new Republican Party came with the Congressional elections of 1854 and the fresh organization won stunning success from the very beginning. That very first year the Republicans won the largest share of the House of Representatives (108 seats, compared to 83 for the Democrats, along with fifteen Senate seats (including the majority of those contested in that election). In other words, the Republicans began their existence not as a third party, or even a second party, but as the instantly dominant party on the ballot. The future “Grand Old Party” showed itself a Grand Young Party not only with its Congressional candidates, but with its first-ever Presidential nominee – John C. Fremont – in 1856. Rather than making the traditional, pointless and masturbatory third party gesture and winning 2% or 10%, Fremont made a real race of it against the Democrat James Buchanan: losing the popular vote 45% to 33%, and the electoral vote, 174 to 118. The real third party candidate was former President Fillmore, whose anti-immigrant Know Nothing campaign drew a few remnants of the Whigs and took just enough votes away from Fremont in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to give Buchanan narrow victories and the electoral majority. By the time they nominated Lincoln four years later, Republicans commanded clear majorities in nearly all the northern states and fully expected to sweep more than enough of those states (especially in light of Democratic divisions) to put him in the White House.
. In the pre-Civil War election of 1860, the Republicans hardly represented an upstart third party effort: they won a clear majority of 59% of the electoral vote and a comfortable plurality (40%) of the popular vote. The real “third party” in this election involved the Southern Democrats who abandoned their national nominee, Stephen A. Douglas, and campaigned for Vice President (and future Confederate general) John C. Breckinridge, winning 18% of the popular vote and 72 electoral votes. Meanwhile, former Cotton Whigs and pro-union Democrats from border states launched a fourth party campaign, winning 13% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes for their man.”
Formed in 1854 and majority party in the Senate and Congress and President in 1860, never really a third party.
It is a third party victory, and one which says that when the Republicans run social liberals, conservatives will run against them as third party candidates.
That’s right.
>> Political parties don’t like traitors.
>> Hoffman will be crushed in 2012 and all his vocal supporters on this site will no where to be found.
This is not about Hoffman - it’s about Conservatism. Hoffman is merely carrying the flag.
You seem to be anticipating his failure.
Linda McMahon, of WWE fame, is running as a Republican against Chris Dodd.
She has a long history with Democrats, but she is running against Dodd as a "fiscal conservative" for the Republican nomination.
This can't be anything other than a Democrat ploy to split the vote away from Rob Simmons in an attempt to save Dodd.
-PJ
Competition is good.
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