Don’t worry 'luc. I laughed.
Well this is kind of a pointless discussion. What I said, from the beginning was that he got the nod from the committee after Dede Scozzafava dropped out. All of this explaining of what everyone already knows is wasted breath.
So, apparently, losing two seats in the house is a moral victory for the GOP … is that right?
As Atrios would say, everything is good news for Republicans.
Depending on your ideological purity and mental flexibility, yes, you can make any loss into a victory. Even if you just turned a victory into a loss. 
This will surely doom the Democrats!
Knock it off.
[ /Moderating ]
Scozzafava was pro stimulus, pro-choice, and not very distinguishable from a normal Democrat.
The majority of the Republicans supported Hoffman has shown in the vote totals but there wasn’t a primary system in place in the 23rd and more of a semi-caucus, party system.
The majority of the kids at my school are anti-gay marriage. I don’t know if it’s because of traditional teenager nuttiness but still.
News for you: there are more than a few Republicans who are pro-choice, and some Democrats who are not. And favoring a stimulus package in an economic slump is not a horrible idea – even if you don’t particularly like the one hammered together by Obama, his cabinet, and Congressional leaders.
As for Hoffman, if “[t]he majority of the Republicans [in NY-23 had] supported Hoffman,” as you allege, he’d be a Congressman today.
However she supported the Obama stimulus plan. Mind you I would support a stimulus plan but not the Obama Stimulus Plan. Also she’s pro-gay marriage and to top it all off she decided to withdraw from the race and endorse the Democratic candidate!
No since there obviously are independents in that district and their vote was divided due to Scoffazava and her endorsement of Owens.
Yeah, how dare she endorse the only remaining candidate who wasn’t an insane puritanical wingnut!
People (including professional pundits and editorial writers, so I’m not singling you out here) seem to have a hard time grappling with the actual choices available to politicians.
There’s rarely a menu of choices available. By the time legislation has worked its way through a committee or two, one’s favorite Pony Plan is no longer an option. The real choices were the Obama stimulus plan, or something pretty close, or nothing.
I’m glad you’re for some sort of stimulus, though. Once the Fed’s interest rate is up against the 0% lower bound, cutting interest rates further to stimulate the economy is no longer an option. When nobody’s willing to spend money, the only way to generate demand is for the government to step in and spend.
This is clearly good news for the McCain campaign.
Of course Hoffman wasn’t the Republican candidate. Clearly, the Republican candidate was the one chosen by the Republican party, and after she left the race, the Republican candidate was the candidate she endorsed. So clearly, we can see that Owens was actually the Republican candidate in that race.
It’s hilarious to me that you appear to think a Republican stimulus plan (if, say, McCain had won the election) would have been philosophically all that fundamentally different from Obama’s plan.
The dems picked up 2 congressional seats. That was ignored when the righties screamed about Obama’s repudiation. But the health care bill was 220 to 215. That is a lot more significant than the governors seats.
Scozzafava also supported Card-Check and Cap and Trade. In fact, I can’t think of a major Democratic initiative she didn’t support. Can anyone name one?
The problem in NY-23 is that she was chosen by 11 party officials in a closed process, and she was immediately and widely opposed by the Republicans in the electorate. We’ll probably never know why the party leaders chose her, but it was clearly a very bad choice. Had they picked Hoffman from the beginning, he’d be in the Congress right now.
Incidentally, and slightly off-topic, can anyone explain to me how they can be both for a $787 billion stimulus bill, AND a trillion dollar tax program like Cap and Trade, which has to be one of the most anti-stimulative bills ever proposed in the Congress? It makes absolutely no sense. You cannot on the one hand claim that the economic situation is so dire that you need to borrow almost a trillion dollars and spend it willy-nilly to keep the economy afloat, then turn around and support a bill that would impose massive taxes on the very sectors of the economy that are hurting the most.
The Wikipedia article on Dede Scozzafava jibes with what I remember from my days dealing with Northern New York politics. I’d call it accurate and balanced.
The “11 party officials” were the chairmen of the county Republican Party committees in the 11 counties in the district, not a random group of power brokers. I would not be surprised to find that they were John McHugh’s Vacancy Committee, the group mandated by New York law who decides what happens to a candidacy in the event the incumbent dies, withdraws, resigns, etc.
Timing. The weak-ass cap’s effects would be negligible for the next decade.
And when it finally does, the *trade *part kicks in. People will pay other people money for carbon permits. The money paid doesn’t disappear from the economy, unless you think the recipients of that money will just stuff it into a black hole.