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What should Diedre Scozzafava want to accomplish by Sunday's appearance on Face the Nation on CBS? Is it just another post-election 'poor poor pitiful me' about being beat up by tea party thugs led by Dick Armey, who will be on the same show? Well, I hope not. Ms. Scozzafava knows politics aint bean bag and there is something for all to learn from the NY23 GOP meltdown. In retrospect, which is a lot like hindsight, Ms. Scozzafava was not the best hope for North Country Republicans and her selection by a handful of county chairs was another example of...

(CNN) - The battle for NY-23 is over. The battle for NY-23 has just begun. After conceding the congressional race to Democrat Bill Owens for the second time in the district’s special congressional election, Doug Hoffman has announced the launch of his 2010 campaign for the seat. “So where to now? Full speed ahead to 2010,” the 2009 Conservative Party nominee told supporters in a message posted on his campaign’s Web site. “Although I’m conceding an election today, I do it with the certainty that we will win back this seat a year from now.”

Even as he faces near-impossible odds of pulling ahead in the count, Doug Hoffman announced Wednesday night that he is officially revoking his concession from Election Night, and is accusing labor unions and ACORN of stealing the election for Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.). Hoffman posted a message on his campaign site Wednesday alleging dirty tricks by Democrats, and is asking for additional campaign contributions to fund a legal challenge to the election results. “As evidence surfaces, we find out that reported results from election night were far from accurate. ACORN and the unions did their best to try and sway...

November 16, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Dede Scozzafava Is No GOP ModerateShe is a donkey in an elephant costume. By Deroy Murdock Re-canvassed votes in upstate New York’s 23rd Congressional District foreshadow the second coming of third-party candidate Doug Hoffman. As Mark Weiner of the Syracuse Post-Standard reported Thursday morning, Conservative nominee Hoffman’s 5,335-vote deficit behind Democrat Bill Owens has shrunk to just 3,026 after Election Night tabulation errors were corrected. Some 10,200 absentee ballots remain uncounted. State Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin told Weiner, “All ballots will be counted, and if the result changes, Owens will have to...

A recanvassing of votes cast in the highly contested NY-23 race shows that the 5,335-vote lead once enjoyed by Rep.-for-now Bill Owens, the Democrat, has narrowed to about 3,000 with another 10,000 absentee ballot uncounted. Owens, who was sworn in last week, was one of 220 Dems to vote give the majority a narrow victory on health care reform. UPDATE: Josh Kraushaar, who has been following this closely, says Conservative Party boss Mike Long thinks Owens is going to win at the end of the day -- because only about 5,400 absentees have been returned. The Syracuse Post-Standard: But Hoffman’s...

Who is Dede Scozzfava? ... "This is my party, too," she insisted. "There are a lot of moderate people - Republicans, like me - and I'm hearing from an awful lot of them. And I think the Republican Party needs to know if they don't have room for us and they don't want us working with them, we're going to find a way to work against them." She acknowledged that many in the GOP would differ with her support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage. But she maintained that she approached those views from a conservative vantage point - a...

Looking for a scapegoat for her poor showing in New York’s 23rd Congressional race, Dede Scozzafava has chosen every liberals favorite, Sarah Palin. Scozzafava in an interview slammed Sarah Palin for “attacking” her, when in reality Palin only endorsed her opponent Doug Hoffman. But then again to liberals if you don’t support them you’re attacking them. I love the way the media is describing Dede Scozzafava even now; they say she’s a “moderate” Republican. CNN describes her as the “face of moderate republicanism”; refusing to call Scozzafava what she is, a liberal. Sarah Palin simply chose principle over party; Dede...

With memories of NY-23 fresh in the minds of conservative activists, the fight over California’s GOP Senate nominee to potentially unseat Barbara Boxer has turned into a game of “who is conservative enough?” Carly Fiorina is playing defense. “I've been called all sorts of things, so I prefer to just tell you what I am,” said Fiorina, in a recent interview with Flash Report. “I am a fiscal conservative. I hold conservative values…I believe that life begins at conception.” That would seem pretty straightforward – until you talk to Chuck DeVore. “She is a big government Republican. Pure and simple....

Over Halloween weekend, Dede Scozzafava morphed from a rosy-cheeked Republican mom to a political figure of speech. "My name's a verb now," she said. A little-known state assemblywoman with moderate Republican views and a mouthful of a surname, Scozzafava's bid for an open seat in New York's 23rd Congressional District drew trash talk from conservative leaders hoping to purge her from the party, mash notes from White House-dispatched Democratic suitors that included Bill Clinton, and the unblinking gaze of political professionals fascinated by her role as the problem child for a dysfunctional Republican Party. Even as she now hopes to...

North country Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava has resigned from her leadership position in the state Assembly. In a prepared statement, Republican Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb said he accepted her resignation as Minority Leader Pro Tempore. Just before last week's election, Scozzafava dropped out of the Congressional race and backed the Democrat, Bill Owens, who went on to win. Scozzafava met Monday to discuss her actions. Many have argued that Scozzafava's last-minute endorsement of Owens gave him the Congressional win. “Today, I had a thorough and frank discussion with Assemblywoman Scozzafava. As a result, Dede has tendered, and I accepted, her...

Everyone and his brother has opinions about what happened on Tuesday, but not all assessments are equally correct, just as not all of the descriptions of the contests, while they were in progress, were equally on the mark. What were some of the mistakes and mischaracterizations during the campaigns and after the voting? One of the worst, I thought, was the widespread characterization of Dede Scozzafava, the Republican nominee in New York’s 23rd district, as a moderate. I realize that those of us in the media use that term to distinguish certain Republicans and Democrats from their more ideologically consistent...

Having been in the position of watching my favored candidate stumble badly in an endorsement session while a more liberal Republican alternative hit all the right notes, I reserved my opinion on the goings-on in the recent Congressional race in New York's 23 Congressional District. Now that it is over, I have concluded that while the local Republican Party leadership's endorsement of Dede Scozzafava may have been a what-in-the-world-were-they-thinking moment, I suspect that many would now be saying, "Can't they do any better than this?", had they had endorsed Doug Hoffman from the beginning. While Hoffman may have hit most...

The charge that State Assemblyman Churck DeVore is making; “don’t be fooled again”. California has its own Dede Scozzafava in the GOP’s newest candidate, Carly Fiorina. On Thursday afternoon I spoke with Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, candidate for US Senate himself. A day after Carly Fiorina’s launch into the primary race, DeVore reiterated his charge that she is a moderate, a centrist, and a pragmatic individual – who has waffled on major issues and decided that voting is something beneath her. DeVore is ready to rumble; he made clear his charges that Carly Fiorina is a close proximity to New York’s...

Political pundits were divided over the significance of Doug Hoffman’s successful bid to grab the “conservative” banner from Dede Scozzafava in the race for New York’s 23rd Congressional District. Scozzafava withdrew after finding herself trailing badly in three way polls between Hoffman and Democratic Candidate Bill Owens. The National Review saw Scozzafava’s defeat as the “first Republican scalp” of the Tea Party Movement, itself a kind of insurgency within the GOP demanding a return to the principles of small government and low taxes. Certainly Hoffman’s candidacy seems like perfect evidence for the proposition that both the Republican and Democratic Party...

How is Dede Scozzafava holding up after a conservative insurgent drove her from the New York House race? Michael Smerconish asks the former Republican candidate about the future of her party. Republican New York State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava was considered a shoo-in to win the special election for the United States House seat in upstate New York this week—until conservative activists from outside the district attacked her for being too moderate and drove her from the race. After Scozzafava dropped out, the Democratic candidate ended up beating the third-party conservative challenger, and the district went blue for the first time...

The morning after Republicans lost an upstate New York House seat, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned that conservative activists will bring destruction to the Republican Party if they drive out moderate candidates across the country. “To those people who are pursuing purity, you’ll become a club not a party,” Graham told POLITICO in the Capitol Wednesday. “Those people who are trying to embrace conservatism in a thoughtful way that fits the region and the state and the district are going to do well. Conservativism is an asset. Blind ideology is not.” Graham, who has sparred with his party’s right wing...

In New York's 23rd Congressional district, Democrat Owens finished with 49% , making him the winner of a plurality of the votes. What's being overlooked by Republicans and conservatives is that Scozzafava, despite having withdrawn from the race, still garnered 6% of votes, with Hoffman getting 45%. I'm guessing that most of Scozzafava's 6% were absentee ballots which had already been mailed before she dropped out. Other votes could have come from die hard fans of hers, or voters who simply didn't know she was no longer in the race. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that Owens won with...

In a shocking, pre-dawn announcement, President Obama upheld his end of the bargain, and named D. Scozzafava his Special Advisor on Reproductive Rights, thus rewarding the Republican Candidate for his only consolation in the November 3rd Elections, otherwise a PR nightmare for the neophyte Executive. The President’s call to the Scozzafava residence came right after the “Thank You” from Democrat Owens who, as he put it, “Couldn’t have done it without her.” “Ms. Scozzafava’s special recognition by Pro-Abortion organizations and her talent as a politcal hermaphrodite make her a natural here in Washington,” noted the President. “We are thrilled to...

Should we believe White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs when he claimed that President Barack Hussein Obama wouldn’t be watching last night’s election returns? Of course not. Why? Because unless Obama was intrigued by the Bowling Green at Buffalo nail biter, it was a slow TV night – except of course, for the election returns. OK thinks that like everything else about this administration, what we were told wasn’t what was going on behind the scenes. We think Obama & Co. anticipated last night’s results. In fact, we think several TVs were on inside the White House last night and that...

Dede Scozzafava won't even commit to how long she'll support House Minority Leader John Boehner for speaker. Faced with persistent questions from John McCormack, a conservative young reporter from the Weekly Standard, aimed at discerning her predilection for pulling an Arlen Specter, Scozzafava called the cops. Her press secretary later released an e-mail exchange with McCormack they thought would vindicate their position, only to find that even Daily Kos agrees with the Standard on this dust-up. This prompted a virtual stampede of conservative bloggers and activists to come forward and demand that Scozzafava drop out of the race. It has...