Teabaggers vs Mainstream Conservatives-- Wrecking The GOP

Last month we started looking at the special election campaign in the mammoth congressional district in northeast New York (NY-23) to replace John McHugh, who Obama named Army Secretary. The district hasn't sent a Democrat to Congress since the Republicans became a reform-oriented party in the 1860s. It went Republican-- but anti-slave Republican-- and never changed, even though the GOP changed so much that-- thanks to Richard Nixon's and Kevin Phillips' "Southern strategy"-- it has come full circle as the party that actually advocates policies that are both racist and as close to slavery as one can get under the current social constraints against that sort of thing. In the end, we concluded that although the mainstream Republican, Dede Scozzafava, is pro-choice and favors equality for gays, she isn't necessarily a better option than conservative Democrat Bill Owens.

She's good for a Republican and he's pretty piss-poor for a Democrat but in the end, she'll generally vote against working families and he'll generally vote for working families. Either, of course, is preferable to the extreme right-wing fringe loon, Doug Hoffman-- a registered Republican, of course-- that the Conservative Party is running. He's being backed by the teabaggers, the Club for Growth, religionist loon Gary Bauer, all kinds of fringe right-wing outfits, and extremist politicians from out of state like Indiana radical Mike Pence and Tennessee actor Fred Thompson. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal pointed out that teabagger antics like this are wrecking the GOP strategy for an electoral comeback-- and not just in Upstate New York.

Hoffman has siphoned so much support from Ms. Scozzafava that their Democratic rival has vaulted into the lead, according to a poll released Thursday. The election is Nov. 3.

Teabaggers are refusing to support the Republican candidate, and teabagger-oriented extremists in Congress, like Pence, are following their lead, hoping for national notoriety. Yesterday the GOP Establishment rolled out an endorsement by Newt Gingrich in the hope of over-awing the far right but instead they got nothing but ire and vituperation from the extremists. Right wing fanatic Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), who would like to rise in the House Republican leadership, wrote Scozzafava a check and "his conservative base attacked him viciously, specifically harping intimidate details of his personal life."

Right-wing propaganda operations are at war with each other as well. The Weekly Standard, which is more like a tabloid selling stories of Michael Jackson resurrections on Neptune every day, is making the absurd claim-- pulled right out of their asses-- that Scozzafava will switch parties if she wins. And a column by William Kristol in the same rag claims that she isn't even the Republican in the race.

The Wall Street Journal is scared that what's happening in NY-23 is also what's happening around the country, including in high profile campaigns in Florida, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Illinois, and Delaware, where the national GOP leaders want candidates who can win moderates, mainstream and independent voters but where teabaggers are looking for the kind of ideological purity that works wonders in Republican primaries but are suicide in general elections.

"Personally, I'm just as fed up with the Republican Party as the Democratic Party," says Catherina Wojtowicz, coordinator of the Chicago tea-party group. "The Republican Party looks great on paper. But the people who call themselves Republicans, with a few exceptions, have no idea what the party stands for, or don't care."

...The Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative group, has announced it's spending $250,000-- and may spend more-- in support of Mr. Hoffman, depicting Mr. Owens and Ms. Scozzafava as equally contemptible liberals. Mr. Hoffman has attracted the endorsements of several conservative and antiabortion groups.

"The fact that [the tea-party groups are] out there is going to help my candidacy, because there are people just like me that are feeling the same frustrations and the same disappointment with our leadership and doing something about it," says Mr. Hoffman.