Republicans made a huge mistake when they kept John Boehner in the House leadership.

I’ve pasted in below a brief from John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, outlining the disastrous support of a leftist GOP candidate in a New York House race.  This is exactly why the RNC and NRCC will continue to get none of my support.  It was leftist Republicans like this that prevented energy, endangered species and immigration legislation from being passed when we had majorities, and led to the anger and disgust the conservative base has with the GOP presently.  We are better to lose the seat than win with this RINO.

Republicans Put on a Clinic
Republicans are set to do well in the November 3 off-year elections, but a conspicuous exception may be the special House election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, a rural area bordering Canada that covers a quarter of the state’s territory. In a wild three-way race, Republican Dede Scozzafava has fallen behind Democrat Bill Owens, largely because Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman is pulling 23% of the vote.
The disastrous Scozzafava candidacy was born when local GOP party bosses met in July to pick a candidate (state law does not provide for a primary in special elections). Anxious to hold onto a district that Barack Obama won with 52% of the vote, they went with Ms. Scozzafava, a stockbroker who had won several terms in the state legislature. The second-place finisher was accountant Doug Hoffman, a staunch conservative.
Mr. Hoffman promptly took the Conservative Party nomination and mounted a renegade challenge to the GOP candidate. He had a lot of ammunition. Ms. Scozzafava is easily the most liberal member of the GOP caucus in the state legislature, scoring a 15% rating on the Conservative Party’s scorecard. She supports abortion rights and the card-check bill that would do away with secret ballot union elections. She has voted consistently for tax increases and backed the Obama stimulus bill that was opposed by every Republican currently serving in the U.S. House.
The election is less than three weeks away, but Mr. Hoffman may be on track to replicate the 1970 showing of Jim Buckley, who won a U.S. Senate seat in New York by convincing voters that both the GOP candidate and the Democratic candidate were too liberal. At this point in the 1970 race, Mr. Buckley was also considered a third-party irritant but gradually convinced voters he was building enough support to be a possible winner.
Republicans in Washington are furious at this turn of events, pointing out that a new Siena College poll has Democrat Owens at 33% and in the lead. President Obama will hold a fundraiser for Mr. Owens next Tuesday in New York City. GOP leaders are urging House Republicans to back Ms. Scozzafava but so far only about one-tenth of them have actually made out checks. "It looks like the whole thing is collapsing around her," one GOP member told me yesterday. "I can’t explain to my donors why I’m writing such a liberal candidate a check."
The danger for Republicans is that Ms. Scozzafava will continue to lose support (the Siena College poll shows that her TV ads make voters LESS likely to support her) while still collecting enough GOP cash and votes to prevent Mr. Hoffman from completing his Jim Buckley scenario. Today, GOP leaders hauled out former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to endorse Ms. Scozzafava, but his statement was perfunctory and avoided praising her stands on issues.
The GOP civil war in New York may indeed hand the seat to Democrats, but even if Republican voters somehow push her over the top next month, the GOP could end up losing anyway. Democrats acknowledge that they approached her to switch parties and run as their candidate in the special election, and she entertained the idea. Should she win the seat narrowly and face a bruising primary with Mr. Hoffman again next year, she could well pull an Arlen Specter and switch parties — joining a party whose policies are more simpatico while embarrassing the GOP at the same time.
— John Fund

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.