The Great Teabag Disaster in New York

On a night when conservatives expected a landmark victory in New York’s 23rd congressional district, the movement’s anointed candidate, Doug Hoffman, instead went down in a startling defeat to Democrat Bill Owens. The official Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, had dropped out days before and thrown her support to Owens after the conservative movement backed Hoffman in a campaign to destroy her, attacking her as a closet socialist with a cynical, hidden agenda—the same terms they have used to demonize President Barack Obama.

Hoffman’s rejection by rank-and-file voters in a solidly Republican district dampened the conservatives’ mood on an otherwise upbeat night and raised serious questions about the movement’s attempt to purge moderates from party ranks. Now, many of Hoffman’s right-wing cheerleaders are struggling to explain their dubious gambit, while others fear repercussions for their zealotry.

With endorsements from the National Rifle Association, the National Republican Congressional Committee and Republican Party elders Newt Gingrich and New York Rep. Peter King, Scozzafava was assured an easy victory. Then Hoffman declared his candidacy on the Conservative Party line. Hoffman was a lawyer and Tea Party activist who did not live in the district and, according to the local Watertown Daily-Times, “showed no grasp of the bread-and-butter issues pertinent to district residents.” Offered as his only selling point: ideological purity.

Hoffman instantly became the point man for the national conservative movement, dedicating himself to fulfilling the right’s dream of a complete purge of moderate elements in the GOP. Campaigning in a local constituency of mostly Republican regulars, Hoffman behaved as though he were running in a presidential primary. He slammed Scozzafava for supporting abortion rights and gay marriage, substituting the hot button issues that had electrified the national Tea Party movement rather than the bread and butter concerns of the working class district he campaigned to represent.

Hoffman’s appeals to cultural resentment attracted zealous support from a who’s who of far-right icons, from Fred Thompson to Glenn Beck, from Rush Limbaugh to Sarah Palin. The former Republican vice presidential nominee recorded a robocall for him a week before Election Day. Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor of Minnesota, sought to establish his conservative credentials in advance of an expected 2012 presidential run by endorsing Hoffman. The National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay religious right group, commissioned a poll supposedly proving Scozzafava’s support for gay marriage had doomed her (the sample size was only 318 likely voters). Meanwhile, cash poured into Hoffman’s coffers through conservativeoutfits from the Club For Growth to the American Conservative Union.

More @ link

http://maxblumenthal.com/2009/11/the-great-teabag-disaster-in-ny-23/