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Having been in the position of watching my favored candidate stumble badly in an endorsement session while a more liberal Republican alternative hit all the right notes, I reserved my opinion on the goings-on in the recent Congressional race in New York's 23 Congressional District. Now that it is over, I have concluded that while the local Republican Party leadership's endorsement of Dede Scozzafava may have been a what-in-the-world-were-they-thinking moment, I suspect that many would now be saying, "Can't they do any better than this?", had they had endorsed Doug Hoffman from the beginning. While Hoffman may have hit most...

Yesterday, we showed you this report by The Washington Independent that a whopping 95 percent of Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman's cash came from outside the district. Today, the Independent crunched some more numbers and found that Democrat Bill Owens also got most of his cash from outside the district -- 86 percent of it. Only $121,596 of Owens' total (as of Oct. 15) $843,441 came from the district. The biggest donor, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, contributed about 11 percent. By contrast, $12,360 of the $265,341 Hoffman raised by that same date came from inside the district. His biggest donor...

The National Republican Congressional Committee just released a new Web ad, "Which is it, Hoffman?" that spotlights Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman's alleged dithering about his positions on certain issues.Here's the transcript:"Doug Hoffman is running for Congress. He is opposed to civil unions. Actually...Oh. Well, he is against big government bailouts. Not before! Geez! Well Doug Hoffman lives in the 23rd...uh...this guy doesn't even live here? Why are we...? Doug Hoffman is running...from himself."Mr. Hoffman, according to a recent Siena poll, is unknown by almost three-quarters of voters in the 23rd Congressional District. The NRCC is likely using this ad to...

Political pundits were divided over the significance of Doug Hoffman’s successful bid to grab the “conservative” banner from Dede Scozzafava in the race for New York’s 23rd Congressional District. Scozzafava withdrew after finding herself trailing badly in three way polls between Hoffman and Democratic Candidate Bill Owens. The National Review saw Scozzafava’s defeat as the “first Republican scalp” of the Tea Party Movement, itself a kind of insurgency within the GOP demanding a return to the principles of small government and low taxes. Certainly Hoffman’s candidacy seems like perfect evidence for the proposition that both the Republican and Democratic Party...

... don’t believe the fact that Hoffman is a social conservative was the reason for his loss, but when it comes to priorities, Simon makes a point worth considering: Hoffman’s capital “C” Conservative campaign tried to separate itself from the majority parties by making a big deal of the social issues. He was all upset that Scozzafava was pro-gay marriage, seemingly as upset as he was with her support for the stimulus plan. The majority of Americans are conservative — not just on matters of fiscal policy, but also on many social issues. After all, in the last presidential campaign...

Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'Drill, baby,...

November 05, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Republican Civil War?Our experts respond. An NRO Symposium The NY-23 race has political commentators abuzz: Is there a Republican civil war going on? If so, who started it, and can there be a truce? If not, why is everyone saying there is one? National Review Online asked a few close observers of the Right to report in on these rumors of war. KEN BLACKWELLDede Scozzafava’s record in the New York State legislature was pro-tax, pro-abortion, and anti-marriage. She even accepted the endorsement of ACORN. But she got the local party elders’ support, based on...

Our online activists have been very, very busy. Using Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and cell phones, we've been directing hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Doug Hoffman and Chris Christie campaigns. We've been calling voters, urging them to vote for conservative candidates. Personally, I've been e-mailing a few acquaintances of mine in the Dede Scozzafava campaign, asking them to convince Scozzafava to drop out of the race. We work behind the scenes, and under the radar. Quietly and effectively, we've been directing support to the conservative candidates in these races. A few months ago, we were working on behalf of...

....And he said that both the GOP nominee, Dede Scozzafava and the conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman were both out of the mainstream of the upstate New York district – which lead to the victory of Democrat Bill Owens Tuesday night.

How’s that “hope and change” working out for you? I can’t speak for the Democrats, but Republicans - particularly New England ones - are loving it. After a year of defeat and dire predictions, Massachusetts conservatives have renewed hope for 2010. There’s definitely change on the way, and in a state whose legislators are about 90 percent Democrat, change can only be good for Republicans. And who can we thank for this new conservative spirit of hopeful-changeyness? The Republican Party’s new hero: Barack Obama. One year ago today, pundits were writing off the American right for the next election cycle,...

Newt said it was difficult to go against the 11 local officials who picked Dede.Says anyone who is angry with him has a right to feel that way.

People are buzzing about this online but I’m not sure why. “I regret deeply that she was chosen,” he says of Scozzafava in an apparent reversal of his prior support. Except it’s not a reversal: He admitted to Andrew Wilkow way back on October 21 that she’s not the person he would have nominated. His endorsement was always strategic, to support Republican leaders at the local level and dissuade third-party challenges next year. Why Republicans in a district where there’s no primary should defer to party leaders instead of rallying behind their preferred candidate is a question left unanswered, but...

For crying-out-loud, Rep. Nancy Pelosi has come up with another zinger... As if her calling out we were losing 5 million jobs a month wasn't enough, the leader of the House is calling out the race in upstate New York a victory. On the point of it being a victory, she's right, literally, the Democrat won. However, meshed in with the fact that a Democrat won, Pelsoi had to expound on the victory by blowing it out of proportion by stating this: From my perspective, we won last night. We had one race that we were engaged in -- it...

The morning after Republicans lost an upstate New York House seat, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned that conservative activists will bring destruction to the Republican Party if they drive out moderate candidates across the country. “To those people who are pursuing purity, you’ll become a club not a party,” Graham told POLITICO in the Capitol Wednesday. “Those people who are trying to embrace conservatism in a thoughtful way that fits the region and the state and the district are going to do well. Conservativism is an asset. Blind ideology is not.” Graham, who has sparred with his party’s right wing...

578 Votes Counted for Scozzafava in 3 Election Districts Where Hoffman Received ZERO Counted Votes With 92% of the precincts accounted for and a hefty 5,850 vote differential, news today that Madison County's Board of Election has confirmed that Doug Hoffman received zero counted votes in three of its fifty-five election districts is unlikely to cause the Conservative candidate in yesteday's Special Election in the 23rd Congressional District to rescind his concession speech. But it does raise eyebrows among election watchers who heard numerous accounts of election day malfunctions of a new voting machine system that was in place yesterday....

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...

The third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives on Wednesday endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman for the 2010 midterm elections. House Republican Conference chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) offered his support to Hoffman, who was defeated at the hands of Democrat Bill Owens in a highly contested special election in upstate New York. "Well, let me say that the lesson here is that we all need to fall behind Doug Hoffman for next fall’s election," Pence told a conservative blog today. "I look forward to welcoming him to Congress a year from now. I think he ran a brilliant campaign."

Democrat Bill Owens may have won last night's special election in New York's 23rd congressional district - but Sarah Palin said Wednesday that race "is not over." Writing on Facebook early Wednesday morning, the former Alaska governor praised Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and "all the other under-dog candidates who have the courage to put themselves out there and run against the odds." "The race for New York's 23rd District is not over, just postponed until 2010," Palin wrote. "The issues of this election have always centered on the economy – on the need for fiscal restraint, smaller government, and...

NRCC Dear Supporter, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your continued support and provide you with a short synopsis of what last night means. Obviously, Virginia and New Jersey now have Republican Governors, but what else can we derive from last night's results in those states and across the country? Below is a short synopsis, but if you would like to read our full memo on what the Virginia results mean, please click here. In VA-02, Democrat Rep. Nye's seat, Governor-elect Bob McDonnell garnered 61.9% of the vote, winning by an impressive 23.8%. Nye is the...

(snip) The GOP wins in New Jersey and Virginia are breeding a new competition among Republicans to take part of the credit. Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, potential rivals for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, both tried to bask in glow."We worked extremely hard on behalf of Bob McDonnell and the entire Republican ticket in Virginia, and helped him close strong with a full day of campaigning in the final week; in New Jersey, we endorsed Chris Christie early and made sure he had the resources to be competitive against his better-financed opponent," Romney told supporters of his Free &...