NY 23 Special Election Bad for Repubs

Back story for NY 23. There are 3 people running. A dem Bill Owens, a repub Dierdre Scozzafava, and an independent Doug Hoffman (conservative party). This district is pretty conservative but not staunchly conservative. The dem is not important. Its the repub versus the independent. The repub is a pretty liberal repub. Too liberal for Club for Growth (uber conservative organization) so they (along with Sara Palin and a couple other crazies) endorsed the independent. The moderate repubs in the party have endorsed Dierdre.

What this comes down to is this, if Doug wins it will empower the ultra conservatives within the repub party to demand more crazy-right repubs to run for office. It will, in essence, drag the party more to the right. This would be great for dems. Yes, they lose this one but they didn't have the seat to begin with.

This election could make it all the more harder for the republican party to seem more moderate. Repubs have lost the last two election cycles because of their extreme views and incompetance. This election will hopefully make the repub party shift more towards the right, becoming less palatable by the American public. Right now repubs are in the crapper with public opinion and this election will only further make them undigestable to mainstream America.