RNC chairman jumps on Hoffman bandwagon
Steele makes the point that he had little choice but to support Dede Scozzafava since she was the nominee of the party. No doubt he is correct. And his embrace of Hoffman at this late date is only Steele bowing to practical politics and the inevitable.
Andy Barr interviewed Steele for Politico:
The actual Republican nominee, Dede Scozzafava, trails Hoffman, the Conservative Party nominee, and Democrat Bill Owens by double-digits according to a recent poll. But Steele argued during an interview with POLITICO that the GOP doesn't need to worry about Scozzafava's lagging ratings because Hoffman is essentially a Republican."You've got two Republicans running in that race. My upside is that one of them will likely win," Steele said. "We want to be supporting the one that wins."
"I don't split the party into conservative or not," he said. "I'm looking as the national chairman to walk out of there one way or the other with a win."
Asked if he would support Hoffman in 2010 if the Conservative Party candidate won the special election and sought reelection, Steele responded: "Why wouldn't I?"
"Is he a Republican?" Steele asked. "He's the Conservative Party nominee, but he ran initially as a Republican."
Steele and the RNC, along with Republican House leadership, have so far backed Scozzafava, but grassroots conservatives have revolted against the state assemblywoman, asserting that she is too liberal for them to support. Scozzafava supports abortion rights and gay marriage and has close ties to labor.
I will give Mr. Steele a pass only because he is a clueless git who should have been replaced months ago. It's not his fault he was forced by his position as party chairman to publicly endorse Scozzafava. Party chairman do what they have to do, and Steele's responsibility was clear.
But the same excuse cannot be offered to the Republican National Congressional Committee who enthusiastically backed Scozzafava at the expense of Hoffman's candidacy, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a liberal's campaign.
By all reports on the ground, Hoffman still has the momentum. And given that Scozzafava is fading fast, it is likely that Hoffman will pick up the bulk of voters abandoning the party choice and win fairly comfortably - perhaps by 5-7%.
The GOP can claim "victory" all they want in NY23 and it won't change the fact that they backed the wrong horse from the start and that conservatives will have sent a message that they ignore at their own peril.

Ad Free / Commenting Login
FOLLOW US ON
Recent Articles
- A Taste of the Swamp
- Do We Have 677 Unelected Presidents?
- Global Relations beyond the Prime Directive
- The Democrat Party: The Enemy Within?
- Tariffs and the Moral High Ground
- ‘Mahmoud Khalil, Who Are You?’
- The Slush Fund Nobody Voted For
- Hacktivism and the Possibility of WW III
- Illegals Working for Congress?
- Should FBI Agents Learn Martial Arts?
Blog Posts
- The Biden White House mixed it up with not one but two autopens
- The Shakespeare National Trust determines that Shakespeare is ‘not to be’
- Carville tells Democrats to quit making asses of themselves
- About that Texas congressman who called the transgender member of Congress 'Mister' ...
- A federal district court judge erases Trump’s ability to rid the country of enemy aliens
- In the UK, rape gangs are OK, pictures of women sans hijabs not so much
- Bacha Bazi still being practiced in Afghanistan; young boys sexually abused
- UN judge convicted of forcing a woman into indentured servitude
- What are capital gains, really?
- Trump begins restoring law and order
- Purge the poison: End Middle East Studies
- The Godfather: 53 and getting better all the time
- Why aren't Johnny and Suzie reading?
- ActBlue smurfs its way to oblivion
- Hunter Biden hotfoots it to a luxury vacation in South Africa, seemingly to avoid a deposition on his claimed poverty