Make no mistake about it, Pete Sessions and the NRCC must shoulder most of the blame and responsibility, with Michael Steele and the RNC coming right behind them. They did not listen. They would not listen. They posited themselves as the smartest people in the room.
And we’ve cleaned their clocks.
Now? We should be magnanimous in victory — and whether Hoffman wins or loses, as long as Dede Scozzafava loses it is a victory — but we should demand accountability, we should demand a reckoning, and we should demand a purge from the party establishment of those people most responsible for the Republican disaster in NY-23.
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licensed to kill time
I guess they’ll start sending fake vomit now.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Uh … Bye then.
Jesus loves me, this I know. The fReichtard meltdown tells me so…
The GOP needs to change the party mascot from an elephant to Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.
Shit like this makes me want to hug complete strangers.
Mojotron
and whether Hoffman wins or loses, as long as Dede Scozzafava loses it is a victory
a pyrrhic victory is still a victory!
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Isn’t Pete Sessions pretty wingnutty himself? I guess the first thing to go in movements like this is self-awareness. Hope the Lake Placid area likes the brownshirts visiting.
Bubblegum Tate
Homer: Stop the madness! Start the movie!
Lisa: Maybe we should calm dad down.
Bart: I prefer to egg him on. Hey dad, has the movie started yet?
Homer screams and freaks out with even more intensity
I prefer to egg the teabaggers on. Go, teabaggers, go!
calipygian
Ewick doesn’t give a shit about the people in NY-23, they are the collateral damage from the real battle.
me
Someone needs to recruit fake teabaggers to oppose Republicans.
Senyordave
Is Redstate the blog where the person accused someone of being a goatfucker or is it the person in charge of the blog actually a goatfucker?
calipygian
Wait a second…Mike Steele positioned himself as the “smartest guy in the room”?
That room must be full of paint chip eaters if Steele is the smartest one there.
kth
Pretty much win-win for Dems: obviously if we flip the solidly Republican seat. But if Hoffman wins, the extremist faction is emboldened to purge more moderates, and that’s good news for Democrats.
calipygian
Eric Erickson: The nation loses the only goat f*&king child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court in David Souter’s retirement.
AJ
“…whether Hoffman wins or loses, as long as Dede Scozzafava loses it is a victory”
I’ve been collecting articles about the Reich-wing Repukes and their fanaticism about party-purity for years. This one just got added to the file.
I believe I saved this snip from a NY Times editorial from December of 2003:
“Republican conservatives have a genuinely coherent worldview they want to see reflected in its entirety. Losing on any issue is enough to rouse their anger, and they take that anger out on any member that does not accept the totality of their worldview. The rules of the Senate make it practically impossible to push any measure through without compromise, because it is divided 51-48-1; and the right wing of the Republican Party is simply ideologically incapable of accepting the kind of compromises that must be made because of the transactional nature of our government.
“Diversity and lack of agreement between interests generally allows an administration to transcend this sort of parochialism. Conservative Republicans, whose ideology rejects compromise, and whose base represents just a narrow elite sliver of the economy, usually fail to take account of the broader interest. The result is an administration whose domestic actions persistently, almost uniformly, fail to uphold the broader public good; and the Republican administration becomes subservient to pressure groups. ”
Four months after this was published, Helen Dewar of the Washington Post wrote:
“Politicians generally are happy to pose with a flag. But not the French flag, especially these days. With the help of a little digital wizardry, the conservative Club for Growth is airing ads showing Republican Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and George V. Voinovich (Ohio) in proximity to French flags in order to disparage their resistance to President Bush’s tax-cut plans.”
Tonal Crow
The GOP: Love, French Revolution Style.
Bring on the guillotines!
smiley
Quote from Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage. I’t’s always about the elites with them. Evan their own.
smiley
@smiley:
You know what I meant.
calipygian
Sully on Malkin on NY-23:
Sully’s naivete about the American Right Wing constantly amazes me.
It IS “radical leftism” to run deficits in a down turn.
It IS “radical leftism” to suggest defense cuts and tax hikes to maintain fiscal balance.
Sully just can’t grok how fucking crazy Malkin and her ilk is.
Bill Arnold
Dougj,
do you have a bet on who will win NY-23?
MikeJ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fXCjSgItgw
Marc
You have to admit, that guy sounds pretty @#$%ing magnanimous in victory there.
charlequin
It’s always just a little difficult for me to believe that Erick Erickson is real. I mean, look at his name!
DougJ
do you have a bet on who will win NY-23?
The registration numbers favor Republicans. So I think Hoffman is probably the favorite now. But a race like this is very tough to predict — low turn-out, Dede’s name still on the ballot, etc.
The Grand Panjandrum
@DougJ: Dave Weigel is reporting that the Independence Party state chairman has now endorsed Owens but acknowledged that some local members have endorsed Hoffman. How much influence does the party have in that district?
Ailuridae
@smiley:
It takes someone who is totally lacking self-awareness to constantly scream elite at anyone disagrees with them when the following are true
1. Grew up in Absecon, NJ
2. Is the daughter of a Cardiologist (I may be recalling this incorrectly but he is one of the high paying disciplines)
3. Attended Oberlin College
4. Has a Rhodes Scholar husband who is a stay at home dad
5. Has been on the libertarian/right-wing dole since she was, without any apparent cause based on previous work, given a position as a columnist at age 22.
To the larger issue of Republican party purity: as an Illinois resident I can only pray this continues against Mark Kirk in the ’10 Senate race.
DougJ
How much influence does the party have in that district?
A reasonable amount, but only in terms of showing up on the party line. And it’s too late to switch that.
So this probably doesn’t make too much difference, but it might be worth a point or two.
aimai
How did you guys miss this paragraph from the linked essay?
eyelashes? figleaf? soiled?
Its just too wonderful.
aimai
Mark S.
I actually think Owens will win. I think he’ll pick up more of Dede’s voters, who seem pretty moderate.
Chad N Freude
@aimai: Freud Gone Wild!
This whole thing is utterly hilarious. Not just the psychoanalytically rich imagery, but the Republiban (not a typo) religious fervor, the total lack of understanding of the need to negotiate and compromise in a pluralistic society, and the suicidal insistence on total conformance to “Conservative Principles”. I’m waiting for the day when there are only two people left, say Erickson and Malkin, and each reads the other out of the Party.
@Mojotron: The Pyrrhic victory wisecrack will not be topped in this thread. Or ever. Also.
Martin
Let me carry over from the previous thread.
Obama has about an 89% approval rating in the north – that include Republicans. He has about a 30% approval rating in the south.
Taking a tactic (running to the right of the GOP) from the south and planting it in the north is an ocean of fail. It might work in this case because of the timing of everything, but if the tabaggers are emboldened by this and apply it across the country stirring up GOP primaries and walking the base away, the Democrats are going to own the place.
ranger3
Yeah, teabaggers are crazy insane screwed up peeps. But Dems have their share of angry reactionaries too.
Hillary Clinton came within a hair of winning the Dem nomination. And if she had become president her first acts in office would have been to declare Lorena Bobbitt’s birthday a federal holiday and have all current and former members of Duke Lacrosse sent to Guantanamo.
Obama has done a comendable job of keeping the lefty crazies in a box. What happens when he’s out of the picture in 8 years and the country at large gets a good up close look of the authoritarian left in all their fucked up glory?
Right now the Democrats are riding pretty high. I don’t even think their low poll numbers are a concern for them, since the GOP numbers are much worse. But what happens after Obama? What happens when Hillary gets nominated in 2016? It’s going to happen. Does anyone think that’s really going to end well?
Chad N Freude
@Ailuridae: An interesting bio for a woman of The Non-Elite, but I think the phrase “Grew up” is incorrect. She spent her childhood there, but she certainly never grew up.
PaulW
That would mean purging the Republicans in the NY-23 who voted for Scozzafava in the first place during the nominating process. Good luck with that.
The Reagan Big Tent has become the Palin Outhouse.
ranger3
Really? Did not know that.
Likes to keep her men on a leash. Interesting.
Martin
Why, I think you just defined yourself quite nicely as a particular breed of crazy leftie.
Ailuridae
@ranger3:
Hillary isn’t going to be nominated in 2016 (she’ll be almost 70) and the Democrats have a deep bench of competent governors from which to choose. A lot of people who follow politics think Obama is a transformational figure; its far more likely hes a transitional figure to a more progressive era moving both poles of American politics further left in the process.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
And that worked out really well for Pyrrhus. Last time I checked the history books before the Texas Board of Edumacation removed all hints of facts from them, Rome went onto conqueor most everything within it’s logistical sphere of influence while Pyrrhus died in a street fight.
Oh wait, such an analogy to the know nothings would mean something if they knew any history. They don’t so now we’re back to the residents of NY-23 being played for the fools by the American Taliban in their quest for national domination one itty-bitty Congressional district at a time.
dmsilev
@ranger3: Contrary to bizarre 90s-era conspiracy theories, Hillary Clinton is not an extreme feminazi.
-dms
PaulW
Democrats mostly own the place (outside of Texas and South Carolina and Appalachian Mtns) already. It’s called “The GOP is at 20 percent voter ID” and it’s usually a good sign that outside of a few local elections the GOP isn’t going to do as well in 2010 as the Villagers believe.
Well, that 20 percent is actually a composite of various polls. Gallup has the GOP at 27 percent (its best numbers). But given that this is out of a 3-Party ID format (Dem, Rep, Independent) where the Dems and Indys are showing healthy mid-30s ID counts (if either gets into the 40 percentile on a consistently polled basis, might as well plan funeral arrangements for the GOP at that point), being at 27 percent is TERRIBLE.
I’ve looked before at Gallup polling numbers. There was a whole shelf of Gallup references at UF Library West when I worked there. Polling numbers for Party ID usually ran like this: 33 percent – 35 percent – 32 percent. With +2/-2 margin for error each poll, roughly. The only changes were which polling number repped which affiliation: some years the 35 percent was Dem, some years the 35 percent was GOP. Can’t recall either party dropping under 30 percent of voter ID ever. Until now.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I’m stealing this for many future blog posts.
Tom Q
I know this is the subtext behind what alot of people are saying here, but let’s get it out in the open: What does this mean for Charlie Crist? Mark Kirk? Mike Castle? These are Scozzafava-like candidates the GOP has been hoping will make them competitive in purple-to-blue Senate races next year. Doesn’t this out-and-out humilation of the GOP establishment machinery make it likely that either the wingnut challengers will defeat these guys in primaries, or that these moderate-ish candidates will tilt ever-right-er to appeal to the teabagger crowd (as Kirk has already been doing, to his shame) and thus diminish their ability to run stronger statewide races?
All this is true whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s race (which I think favors Hoffman now — as Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out the other day, Moynihan never won this district when he was running up 67% statewide totals). If Owens squeaks by, it’ll be because the establishment didn’t get behind Hoffman early enough. If Hoffman wins, it’s a sign they need someone like him running EVERYWHERE.
When the loonies took over the KS GOP, they still won statewide races (at least in the Senate) because the state’s Republican roots ran so deep. There’s going to be a lot different result when the same happens in states without such tradition.
Ambergris
The worst thing that could happen now (or the best thing?) is an Owens victory by just a few percent, with Dede Scozzafava getting a few percent because she’s still on the ballot. In this case, Hoffman supporters could claim that Scozzafava stole a Hoffman victory and the Civil War breaks out. A Hoffman victory would at least keep the seat for Repub…. eh, conservatives. Heck, maybe we should stop counting party affiliation in the congressional make-up and instead list ideology, for example, the Senate: 61 liberals & centrists vs. 38 stone age conservatives plus a Lieberman.
Well, in any case… we’re on the road to Peak Wingnut, and it will be awesome.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Very true. Here in Misery, the Dem machine of 2 generations ago is exactly that, a thing of the distant past. The Repup machine here is dominated by wingnuts but is also a well-oiled machine. The Dems? They’re still living in the past and plagued by chronic rice-bowl squabbling. Moreover, their starting lineup is about an inch deep. At least lately, the Repups seem to be suffering a similar fate although it was just a few years ago that they seemingly had a never-ending stream of teeeveee-legenic wingnuts ready to run in any race in any location.
So yeah, this approach works in states like KS, MO and the Old South but try it even in a red state like either Dakota. There, it will come down to the individual candidate and the campaign they run. Hell, even VA.
Anoniminous
Posted this:
In the wrong thread. So I’m going to be annoying and post it here, too.
Also.
eemom
Good heavens, these people hate each other almost as much as they hate us.
They just, like, HATE.
So maybe they’ll out-circular-firing-squad us after all.
Anoniminous
@Anoniminous:
And, somehow, the blockquote shifted itself around.
(I quit.)
calipygian
Christ already has his Hoffman – his name is Marco Rubio and K-Lo’s House of Crazy LOVES them some Rubio.
His name is already aloft in the winds of crazy, like a whisper building in a mighty crescendo to a booming RUBIO!
Rubio and Christ will beat the shit out of each other in a primary that the Club for Growth will totally kill for the GOP.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Somethings never change:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE
SPLITTERS!
Anoniminous
@Anoniminous:
Oops.
Gingrich endorsed Hoffman.
Time to step away from the computer.
Wile E. Quixote
With apologies to the Trammps
Wingnut Inferno (sung to the tune of Disco Inferno
Wile E. Quixote
Oh, and what happened to the edit function? SuckPress had it for a little while, and then it went away again.
chrome agnomen
@eemom:
i posted something to this effect a while back, and have said it for years. the republican platform has for a long long time been, in essence, “don’t you hate something or someone? so do we. come join us and let’s hate together.”
Chad N Freude
@chrome agnomen: That, of course, is the Big Tent(tm).
Svensker
@ranger3:
You think Hillary is a radical? Based on her support for the Iraq war? Based on her support for the Kosova war? Based on….what?
TenguPhule
Oh DougJ, your slip is showing.
TenguPhule
If only we could have the teabaggers suicidebomb their own and ensure that’s all they hit, it would be a better world.
parksideq
@PaulW:
WIN
Nutella
@Svensker:
Based on HRC is female and he despises women. Note how he also missed the elitism point of the Malkin bio above and noted only that she must be a ball-buster since her husband takes care of the kids.
CalD
I would actually agree that a third place finish for Scozzafava might be the best possible outcome for the long-term health of the Republican party. My thinking is that an invigorated American Conservative Party and/or Libertarian party might draw off enough right-wing crazies to allow more mainstream Republican moderates to stage a revolt and oust their radical leadership.
Cain
@ranger3:
Don’t worry though, she’s working hard with the hard right to make sure that women get back into the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. So this is really just a temporary thing. In the mean time, she’ll take out her cheerleader costume every once in awhile and show him what she’s sharing with the rest of the world.
cain
kommrade reproductive vigor
@eemom: They just like hate.
De-commafied for accuracy. ;-)
Studly Pantload
@Wile E. Quixote:
::golfers clap::
However, I do hold you responsible for that tune now being stuck in my heard. AAARRRRGHHH!
Notorious P.A.T.
@ranger3:
That’s idiotic.
Who are the Democratic counterparts to the teabaggers? Seriously, who?
Hillary Clinton would have celebrated Lorena Bobbit’s birthday? Why? Because she is such a pro-woman crusader? Based upon what?
What “authoritarian left”? Honestly, where are they?
Notorious P.A.T.
@Svensker:
Thank you.
The Iraq invasion has been a disaster for women in the Mid East. So naturally feminist firebrand Hillary Clinton has backtracked her support for it, right? Not a chance.
Anne Laurie
@ranger3:
Persistent rumor among conservatard misogynists and mischievous progressives is that Jesse chose his little Filipina helpmate as a sockpuppet to speak those truths-to-power that straight white men are no longer “allowed” to express. Others believe that he is the blogger version of Jon Gosselin.
Woodrowfan
I think it’s more him keeping her where he can watch her,,
Maus
Where the fuck did you come from, and how quickly can you return there?
The problem with her is the same problem with Bill, they’re too concerned with “centrism” and are too hawkish. While I admire her guts, she overcompensated and the neocon-lite schtick wore thin during the primaries.
Enlightened Layperson
Some theorist here wrote that peak wingnut will occur when the GOP becomes unelectable because no sane candidate can win the primary and no crazy can win the general. So you can consider this election a test whether a very conservative district in Upstate New York has hit peak wingnut yet. (Probably not).
ksmiami
Republican party platform: Government sucks and is giving your money to the brownz ppl; elect us so we can screw up goverment and give your money to our white pals!
I interlope here and I stil stand by my early statements that the GOP is just one huge rubberband ball of infinite suck.
p.s.: Note to Sully – the American Right is totally different than the Tories and they um really hate you.
Jess
So, basically, we’re on the verge of Civil War part 2. Maybe this time we can let them secede.
Fax Paladin
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Ah, I see I’m not the only one who thought of that…