NY-23

It was quite amazing to watch conservative activists torpedo the Republican Party's chosen candidate for the special Congressional election held in NY-23 yesterday. In general, as proved the case yesterday, such an extreme breakdown of party discipline automatically leads to the election of the opposing party's candidate. The only reason the race remained in suspense was because of the unusually-conservative electorate there. New York has 29 congressional districts: Democrats now control 27 of those seats.

Today, Rush Limbaugh (and others) are proclaiming that the Republican Party nominated the wrong person in Dede Scozzafava. They also proclaim that Scozzafava was a turncoat for endorsing her Democratic opponent Bill Owens over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. But, really, what did they think was going to happen? Who are the turncoats here? To win, party discipline has to hold. Hoffman had no command of local issues and didn't even live in the district. He was a much weaker candidate than either Owens or Scozzafava. The conservative scorched-earth vilification campaign yielded a natural result: the loss of Congressional representation. Serves them right!

Conservatives will apparently use this disastrous election template to purify their ranks of RINOs. Florida is next (Marco Rubio vs. Charlie Crist). Well, OK, let's get the pitchforks out and start harvesting Republican heads! As California went in 1994, so goes the nation. A purer GOP will soon be reduced to near-irrelevance if this keeps up.