The Republican Party’s breathtaking cluelessness in NY-23 election

Photo credit/The Busy Brain
Full disclosure up front. We at Patriot Room endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 special election next week. We led off last week’s podcast (link now fixed) with the endorsement and a discussion of the race.

But even if we were not supporting him, it is still mind boggling why the national Republican Party, and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) in particular, cannot seem to acknowledge that their candidate, Dede Scozzafava is (1) tanking in the polls and cannot win and (2) is taking votes from Hoffman, who, if he got her votes, would most definitely beat the Democrat, Bill Owens.

As pointed out by Bill Pascoe at CQ Politics, why the hell does it matter to the National Republicans which Republican wins, as long as one of them does?

That’s the truly remarkable part of this whole story — look at all the polls taken in this race, and you see that if you combine the Scozzafava vote and the Hoffman vote, you’ve got a clear majority for one Republican candidate; why should it make a difference to the NRCC whether the Republican who represents the district is the officially-sanctioned (but very liberal) Republican, or the unofficially-sanctioned (but more mainstream conservative) Republican?

Answer: It should not. Either one is going to vote for a Republican for Speaker, and that’s all the NRCC cares about — scratch that, should care about — in this instance.

The other maddening issue, especially for a group that purports to represent the entire right side of the political spectrum like the NRCC, is they don’t seem to understand who their true base is.

Apparently, [Oklahoma Republican Congressman Tom] Cole is the first Republican insider to recognize the importance of the confluence of two key data points revealed in recent polling — last week’s Washington Post/ABC News poll, which revealed that only 20 percent of the nation answers to the name “Republican,” posted against this week’s Gallup Poll, which showed that 40 percent of the country identifies itself as “conservative.”

In other words, Cole understands which end is the tail, and which end is the dog.

Note to Republican leaders — when there are twice as many people calling themselves “conservative” as there are people calling themselves “Republican,” it makes no sense to nominate as your party’s candidate a woman who’s so far to the left, ideologically, that she’s been endorsed by the nation’s premier left-wing blogger.

The MSM lefties love the “fight on the right” meme in NY-23 and will use it to talk about the “crack-up” of the Republican Party (one of their favorite story lines and a term, funnily enough, that never seems to apply to the Democrats’ intramural fights, despite the fact that such fights are the sole reason no health care and energy reforms have been enacted).

But I would expect the NRCC, which is presumably interested in electing any Republican that can win wouldn’t try to be the cause of the fight-on-the-right. These things are not static. The Conservative candidate, Doug Hoffman, now has the momentum and both parties agree that Scozzafava is toast. There is a week left and Hoffman can win. It is time for somebody to tell Michael Steele, the NRCC, and the RNC that they need to back off and let Hoffman win this seat. Otherwise, they will be the ones to blame for the loss.

Related Posts

1. Breaking: Scozzafava drops out of NY-23 race UPDATED: Confirmed
2. Breaking: Hoffman Surges Into Lead in NY-23
3. Correct question: Is the Republican Party is a help or a hindrance to the Tea Party movement?
4. Sarah Palin Is A Republican Who Speaks At Tea Party Events Occasionally
5. NV re-election poll: Sen. Reid losing to divided Republican Party

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