[WanderingOak]

Has anybody else been following New York's 23rd Congressional district election? All of the sudden, the North Country's frozen tundra is a bloody political battlefield, which could have the fate of the Republican party hanging in the balance.

For the uninitiated, this is the senate seat that was vacated when President Obama appointed John McHugh as Secretary of the Army. While I'm not a Republican, that party has held this district since the Lincoln administration. The GOP chose Dede Scozzafava a moderate state Assemblywoman as the Republican candidate. The only problem is that Doug Hoffman, who was competing with Scozzafava for the nomination, was a sore loser. He went to the Conservative party saying that he wanted to run on their ticket, and has since garnered the support of seemingly every right wing loon in the country from Dick Armey, to Michelle Bachman to Sarah Palin. What was going to be a simple local Congressional special election has become what is essentially a referendum on the Republican party. Bill Owens, the Democratic nominee, is looking on in seeming bewilderment as Hoffmann continuously attacks Scozzafava as not being 'conservative enough'.

With one week until the election, the attack ads from Hoffman's quarter are running every five minutes during the local news. Scozzafava trying to defend herself, running a few attack ads of her own, but she's running out of funding, while Hoffman is being funded by national conservative organizations. What's worse is while Owens and Scozzafava are locals and understand local issues, Hoffman is acting as if he is running for a national office. He's admitted that he doesn't know anything about dairy farmers (there are more cows than people in this district) or Fort Drum (the local military base). Instead, he's just attacking his opponents as being Acorn backed, pro-choice, tax and spend liberals. His national supporters have said that the national issues of gay rights and abortion are more important than parochial matters.

The way I see it, the only thing Hoffman will accomplish will be to alienate the local Republican voters. He's made Scozzafava look downright pitiful, took away her funding, and is probably going to cost the GOP this district, and hand it to Owens on a silver charger.

I don't understand why these wingnuts keep selecting idiots to run for office. It is almost as if in this case, that since they are performing so pathetically, that they might want to lose, and to deliberately spoil the election for the GOP as well. That would discredit the GOP leadership, thus allowing more radical elements to take charge of the party. Yes, it is absurd that the fate of America rests on one small Congressional district. I try to tune it out, but every other house in town has somebody's sign in the yard, and I live three blocks from Hoffman's office. I can't turn on the TV, radio or even walk down the street without being slapped in the face with local politics which have somehow made the national headlines...