Swing State Project: Well, it didn't take Doug Hoffman long to start bringing the crazy...

My Left Nutmeg: Dodd pursues sweeping financial regulatory changes

Pruning Shears: The long climb back

field negro: Here in Mississippi, we don't need our blacks educated

Pam's House Blend: Pathetically ignorant and perpetually dishonest Republican contributes more battsh*ttery to the public discourse

TPMMuckraker: CREW calls on State Dept. to probe Galbraith over Kurdish oil dealings

DOWNLOADS: (1874)

PLAYS: (2574)

Embed

I was wondering how Newt Gingrich would react to the crazy teabaggers that attacked him for endorsing Scozzafava: Would he stand by his principles or would he bow down at the altar of Rush Limbaugh?

Here's what what said in his endorsement of Dede Scozzafava:

“The special election for the 23rd Congressional District is an important test leading up to the mid-term 2010 elections,” Gingrich said of Scozzafava's candidacy in a statement to supporters, as reported by the The Post-Standard. “Our best chance to put responsible and principled leaders in Washington starts here, with Dede Scozzafava.”

--

“The Republican Revolution in 1994 started very much like what we see today,” the former speaker said. “Like then, our country is reeling from misguided liberal policies, high taxes and out-of-control spending. This special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District could be the first election of the new Republican Revolution, but we need the momentum to get it started.”

The NRCC said this:

But Gingrich, who served as Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, wants to unite the party. He sees Scozzafava and the Upstate special election – the only House race in the nation this fall -- as the best hope for Republicans to start a comeback and regain control of Congress.

Gingrich is apparently willing to overlook Scozzafava’s support for same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

The teabaggers, Palin, Limbaugh and Beck were all putting their energy behind a man who wasn't even from the district, Doug Hoffman, and in the end it cost the GOP a seat in a district that hasn't elected a Democratic politician to represent them in over 100 years.

Right before the election, right-wing bloggers attacked Newt for supporting Dede and said they would never support him for President because of it. After Hoffman lost, Rush Limbaugh blamed Newt and the GOP party machine for Hoffman's loss.

What would Newt Gingrich do? Would he stand up for his endorsement and tell the teabagger brigade that to win national elections, the party needs moderates to be included? After all, he's the Big Kahuna. Guess again. In his election night wrapup that he tweeted the day after the election, he repeated Rudy Giuliani's line that Scozzafavva was too liberal to have been the Republican nominee, which is a blatant lie.

In retrospect it is clear Dede Scozzafava should never have been nominated because she was far too liberal to be acceptable.

Republican leaders in New York must recognize that Mike Long and the Conservative Party in that state have to be consulted before decisions are made. The national conservative movement is a force that has to be recognized and respected.

I certainly heard from enough friends to know that my decision to support the unanimous vote of the 11 New York county chairs was very unpopular with conservative activists.

In New York, after two failed special elections, it is clear the state party has to fight to change the election law so there are primaries in special elections. The insider nominating process is simply unacceptable to grassroots populists and guarantees a sense of illegitimacy.

Then, on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night, he explained in detail why he regretted having supported Scozzafava. It was pretty abject.

Gingrich: I think the nomination was a mistake. I wish that we had gotten involved earlier. And if we had, I would have done everything I could to make sure she had not been picked. And she clearly proved in the last few days that she was in no way a loyal Republican.

Gingrich isn't one to make a snap judgment without knowing the facts, and he knew Dede was moderate on social issues, but to say she's not conservative enough is ridiculous.

If Republicans try to laugh off the notion that Limbaugh is running their party, all the media have to do is look at Newt. He caved to Limbaugh big time.

Newt was the darling of the right just a few moments ago, it seemed, but now he's in a battle with the lunatic fringe of his own party.

Rush Limbaugh zeroed in on Newtie today and took out his rage against Gingrich and the "party bosses" because he supported a moderate conservative over the Palin-Beck-Limbaugh teabagger nominee named Doug Hoffman and Hoffman lost. Sarah Palin has as much egg on her face as the rest of them do. When a district like NY-23 comes up for election, a Republican always wins. Their purity test helped lose them a guaranteed seat. Pretty awesome.

LIMBAUGH: Here is -- these are my thoughts on New York-23. In the first place, I'll have to double check this, but I'm reasonably sure that this was the highest percentage of the vote ever won on the Conservative Party line by a House or Senate candidate. I think Hoffman had a higher percentage of the vote than even James Buckley, who won his U.S. Senate race on the -- against or against this Gooddell guy, Charles Gooddell, in the '70s. So, that's one thing.

But, the right message; we cannot forget how this whole thing happened in the first place. There was not a primary. The right message here would indict the way party bosses, Republican Party bosses and these big thinkers like Newt screwed the whole thing up from the get go.

The teabaggers are turning to threats and intimidation out there in NY-23 land.

Elizabeth Benjamin writes in the NY Daily News:

It's getting ugly out there.

I just got off the phone with former state Democratic Chairwoman June O'Neill, who informed me the police had been called to at least two polling sites in St. Lawrence County due to overzealous electioneering (O'Neill called it "voter intimidation") by Doug Hoffman supporters.

"We've gotten reports that people are standing there, covered with Hoffman stickers and yelling anti-choice stuff at voters," said O'Neill, a St. Lawrence native who has been running the party's GOTV effort for Bill Owens in NY-23.

"Apparently, there's some woman claiming to be a commissioner," O'Neill continued. "Commissioner of what, I don't know. She's from Texas, I think, and she won't leave."

"This is not the way we roll in the North Country."'

O'Neill also said she had received anecdotal reports of problems at polling sites in Gouverneur, which is Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava's hometown. But she couldn't immediately confirm this.

I called over to the St. Lawrence Board of Elections and got GOP Elections Commissioner Debbie Pahler on the line. She confirmed that the police indeed had been called, but she downplayed the incident, saying it's "a routine procedure here in the county."

"We had electioneering within the 100-foot polling marker," Phaler said. "It's my understanding that they were asked to leave and wouldn't leave."

"If people are electioneering within the marker and don't stop when we ask them to, our inspectors are instructed to call law enforcement to assist them. I don't think anybody was arrested."

O'Neill also said she had received anecdotal reports of problems at polling sites in Gouverneur, which is Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava's hometown. But she couldn't immediately confirm this.

The Glenn Beck crowd are out there yelling anti-choice crap. They will bring the same anger and hatred they brought to the town halls that they disrupted. This is going to put a lot of stress on local police forces.

This is just the beginning. Gee, I wonder if Fox News will cover this voter intimidation and try to make a national story out of it. OK, I was joking. I hope the local media up in NY-23 get plenty of video of this. If any of our readers has video, please email us: crooksandliars-at-gmail.com

The Glenn Beck candidate wouldn't denounce Rush Limbaugh using a bestiality quote against Dede Scozzafava. That's not surprising for a phony teabagger like Hoffman.

Frank Rich had a great article about the NY-23 race on Sunday:

And Scozzafava is a mainstream conservative by New York standards; one statistical measure found her voting record slightly to the right of her fellow Republicans in the Assembly. But she has occasionally strayed from orthodoxy on social issues (abortion, same-sex marriage) and endorsed the Obama stimulus package. To the right’s Jacobins, that’s cause to send her to the guillotine.

Sure enough, bloggers trashed her as a radical leftist and ditched her for a third-party candidate they deem a “true” conservative, an accountant and businessman named Doug Hoffman. When Gingrich dared endorse Scozzafava anyway — as did other party potentates like John Boehner and Michael Steele — he too was slimed. Mocking Newt’s presumed 2012 presidential ambitions, Michelle Malkin imagined him appointing Al Sharpton as secretary of education and Al Gore as “global warming czar.” She’s quite the wit.

The wrecking crew of Kristol, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Michele Bachmann, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the government-bashing Club for Growth all joined the Hoffman putsch. Then came the big enchilada: a Hoffman endorsement from Palin on her Facebook page. Such is Palin’s clout that Steve Forbes, Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor (and presidential aspirant), promptly fell over one another in their Pavlovian rush to second her motion. They were joined by far-flung Republican congressmen from Kansas, Georgia, Oklahoma and California, not to mention a gaggle of state legislators from Colorado. On Fox News, Beck took up the charge, insinuating that Hoffman’s Republican opponent might be a fan of Karl Marx. Some $3 million has now been dumped into this race by outside groups.

Who exactly is the third-party maverick arousing such ardor? Hoffman doesn’t even live in the district. When he appeared before the editorial board of The Watertown Daily Times 10 days ago, he “showed no grasp” of local issues, as the subsequent editorial put it. Hoffman complained that he should have received the questions in advance — blissfully unaware that they had been asked by the paper in an editorial on the morning of his visit.

Last week it turned out that Hoffman’s prime attribute to the radical right — as a take-no-prisoners fiscal conservative — was bogus. In fact he’s on the finance committee of a hospital that happily helped itself to a $479,000 federal earmark. Then again, without the federal government largess that the tea party crowd so deplores, New York’s 23rd would be a Siberia of joblessness. The biggest local employer is the pork-dependent military base, Fort Drum.

The media is trying to frame today's election as some sort of referendum on President Obama, but NY-23 has voted Republican for decades and decades, so the real battle is between Republicans. If Owens wins, then I'd say conservatives have a real big problem. There will be a circular firing squad among Club for Growth, Limbaugh, Palin, Steele and Gingrich. Newt endorsed the moderate Republican after all, which is not the Fox flavor at the moment.

Last week, Gingrich became one of a small handful of conservatives who endorsed Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R) in her bid to fill Army Secretary John McHugh's now-vacant House seat. As a result, conservative bloggers said Gingrich had eliminated himself from contention for the GOP's presidential nomination in 2012.

And the wingnut bloggers attacked Gingrich over it too.

Right-wing bloggers have recently attacked Newt Gingrich for endorsing Republican Dede Scozzafava over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the special election to fill Army Secretary John McHugh's (R-NY) vacated congressional seat. On her blog, Michelle Malkin said "no thanks" to the possibility of a Gingrich 2012 presidential run, noting that he is the "most prominent GOP endorser of [the] radical leftist NY-23 congressional candidate," while at RedState.com, Erick Erickson reportedly wrote -- before removing the post -- that Gingrich "stands athwart history and pees on the legacy of 1994."

Hoffman doesn't even live or know anything about the district he's running in, but for teabaggers, that doesn't matter. Knowledge is a liability for the teabagger movement.