You will only be shocked by this story if you didn’t pay attention last year

Robert Stacy McCain reports that Dede Scozzafava has not been forgotten by democrats grateful for one of their few pleasant surprises of election evening

What Dede Scozzafava did can never be forgiven, nor should it ever be forgotten.

You might recall that once it was clear she could not win in NY-23 she endorsed the Democrat Bill Owens who managed re-election with three names on the ballot for the 2nd time.

I still say the NRCC owes us 900k. A lot to think about for the next chairman who should keep it in mind.

Bill Owens and The reverse Fishbait Miller

Talk about a meaningless gesture:

Rep. Bill Owens, a Democrat from upstate New York, may back House Republican leader John Boehner for speaker.

Talk about a reverse FishBait Miller scenario. Although it would look good symbolically the GOP needs Bill Owens as much as Dan Maeffi will need his congressional parking space after Jan 3rd.

It’s going to take more than a meaningless vote to return Bill Owns to the House

Update: I guess he figured it out

A New York Democrat has changed his mind about possibly voting for GOP leader John Boehner as the next House speaker.

Rep. Bill Owens now says he was “blowing off a little steam” when he told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise on Monday that it was “quite possible” he could vote for Boehner as speaker.

I guess he will have to win election the old fashioned way and earn it.

I have always been of the opinion that a candidate that has lost once…

…is actually a better candidate because they have the experience of losing. Failure tends to be a rough but solid teacher, but you need to have a student willing to learn from those lessons.

If Martha Coakley was the type, she could learn from her loss and come back stronger. I don’t know if she is the type but we will see.

Which brings us to Doug Hoffman.

Conservatives owe Doug Hoffman a real debt. If Dede Scozzafava had won she would not only been a vote for Obamacare, she would have been on every TV show and every network portrayed as the “Republican”. She would have been jammed down our throats as the “bipartisan” republican ideal and proof that republicans had to abandon conservatism.

If we had Scozzafava, we would not have had Scott Brown, Period! The only reason why we don’t have Scozzafava is because of Doug Hoffman. I met Doug briefly at CPAC and shook his hand thanking him. We owe him big.

All that being said he made some errors. At the debate he seemed weak on local issues, he conceded too quickly and then unconseded and then reacted poorly when the loss held up.

These were all errors but are not fatal errors. With time and experience under his belt he has been busy, not only keeping up his conservative credentials nationally but within the district. With hard work on the local issues he will be better prepared to face Bill Owens in the fall. It is necessary to have both a national and local message, a primary election will enable that.

Of course Bill Owens breaking of his campaign promises with record speed certainly won’t hurt Doug, particularly since he attacked incredibly unpopular obamacare way back when (was this only 4 months ago?)

So as the bard wrote, once more, once more unto the breech.

“I’m just an average citizen, standing up to say, ‘We’re fed up. We’re not going to take this any more,’ ” Mr. Hoffman told The Washington Times in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I don’t think anybody should expect to inherit political office … . I’m going to work very hard to earn the respect and support of all the voters in the district.”

Nice to see Stacy’s byline at the Washington Times again. The village voice may think it’s funny but I suspect they will not be laughing in November. As Stacy writes:

“I do know there are a lot of grass-roots supporters around the district who still have [Hoffman for Congress] signs in their basements, and they’re itching to get them back out.”

Well it’s time to break out mine too.

Vote Hoffman!

Q: Why is NY-23 and Doug Hoffman still a target?

A: and no it’s not because they are preparing the ground for 2010, it is because Hoffman is the PALIN candidate.

Once Palin endorsed Hoffman the race changed, it changed what republicans did and what democrats did. Once the election turned out poorly for us Suddenly it was THE race of the night as far as the left was concerned.

As long as Hoffman is connected to Palin they will attack him as “Far Right“. So much easier to go against a 3rd party candidate on the Canadian border than it is to risk angering hundreds of thousands of readers who may or may not be buying your paper. Particularly if you are a republican.