Wow, Thanks for the Seat!

Well, frumps, I started out this week a little “under the weather” but there’s something magically restorative about the spectacle of a gang of overheated “ideological purists” hoist with their own petards. Forget about the gubernatorial races, I’ll take House seats anytime; and of course, the sauce that makes that particular NY-23 House seat so utterly delicious is that it’s been a Republican held seat since Homer was a pup. And to think that some of my least favorite people in the world came out in force to deliver up this precious little gift – it’s just so utterly divine.

Actually, the entire production, from start to finish, was quite the tour de force. Something like mounting a full-blown production of Gone with the Wind set in Petticoat Junction . . . Up until a month or so ago, most of us were pretty well satisfied to take it on faith that NY-23 existed, in rustic self-sustaining serenity – like Brigadoon. We also, over the centuries, came to trust that, at fairly regular intervals, the good people of NY-23 would pick out a Republican to pack off to Washington, DC to represent their austere needs in Congress.

And so it might have remained for the foreseeable future. NY-23 lies smack dab in the heart of “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It” East Coast pragmatism. That is, until “Scylla from Wasilla” lured Doug “Everyman” Hoffman out of his local comfort zone and sparked a presidential fire in his belly, propelling him far too far, far too fast.

Still Lacks Class

To me, the most poignant aspect of this piece of political theater was the transformation of Doug Hoffman from small town “deer in the headlights” carpetbagger to Acorn-stomping, savvy candidate, doling out “props” to his “peeps” – Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.   Poor guy . . .

And then there was the specter of T-Paw tagging along saying “me too, me too.” One thing you have to give Sarah Palin, she sure knows how to put on a show. I’m assuming La Palin’s Facebook page, which has become a sort of political Magic 8 Ball, will be a hot property for a while, too.

Watch how “Peter Pen Protector” turns into Boss Tweed in the space of a week under the influence of Alaskan agitprop, the largesse of Club For Growth and the tutelage of Uncle Dick Armey of the FreedomWorks Love Train:

It’s All In The Tea Leaves

I’m still not sure exactly what happened here.  Dede Scozzafava was the Republican shoo-in, endorsed by the party that has held this seat on auto-pilot for over a hundred years.   Dede had her occasional liberal hiccups but, for the most part, she toed the party line.

Maybe Doug Hoffman took the 912 bus to DC this fall and had an epiphany. Whatever . . . he decided to put his name on the ballot for an election that wasn’t even in his district;  he was trying to persuade strangers to vote for him without having a clue what their issues are and, all of that, in a district that had 46,000 more Republican voters on roll than any other party. Perhaps he drank too deeply of the Patriot Tea (which has mildly hallucinogenic properties).

This was playing out just as you might expect, the Republican was leading, the Democrat was runner up and Hoffman, the Conservative, was dead last. But then something marvelous happened in the Tale of Hoffman, suddenly big-name endorsements rolled in, talk radio spots opened up, Glenn Beck came a-mentoring, even Rush was all over the slightly nerdy unknown tea-bagging accountant.  The “grassroots” coughed up huge globs of cash to persuade the tapped-out front-runner, with the locally appropriate campaign budget, that maybe the spoils should go to the spoiler.

My best guess is that this is some brand of Tea-baggery with delusions of grandeur.  The message seems to be just as disorganized and amorphous; the money seems to be coming from the same ideological bayous; and there is that same cognitive disconnect between an imaginary sense of majority and concrete numbers – all the things that afflicted the Dog Days Tea Party.  Of course that means it should be somewhat entertaining to watch.  My bet is that the “big spenders” that footed the closing days of the Hoffman campaign will tire of this impractically iffy proposition long before the Tea Party rank and file locate some viable candidates.

Technorati Tags: Doug Hoffman, Sarah Palin, Fred Thomson, Dede Scozzafava, NY-23, Conservative, Republican Party, Democrats, Bill Owens

Tagged as: Bill Owens, conservative, Dede Scozzafava, democrats, Doug Hoffman, Fred Thomson, NY-23, republican party, sarah palin