Pawlenty Goes Rogue
Republican Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota and virtual candidate for President, has come out to endorse Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in NY-23 according to reports. With Fred Thompson, Sarah Palin and now Pawlenty all endorsing Hoffman, could the Mayans be right and we don’t even have to worry about who the Republican nominee will be in 2012?
Tags: Republcians
Give me some popcorn and a vacation home in Iowa so I can see the fluster-clucky GOP race to be the craziest crazeperson first hand.
Typical GOP primary – who can out-conservative the others and then claim to be a moderate. I’ll join you in Iowa, Jason. I need a good laugh.
I would join you in thinking that trying to appeal to the rabid Republican base is a mistake. However I certainly don’t trust the media to report this. I’m sure they’ll call him a moderate no matter how crazy he gets.
And therein lies the rub, U.I. You just hit it on the head. After the Fox-CBS lovefest last week I am totally disgusted with the MSM. We are back to the days of yellow journalism.
new poll out posted at hotairpundit:
Has Doug Hoffman At 34%, Owens ar 39%, Scozzafava In Free-fall At 14%
only one week left in this special election! then we get to do it all over again in 2010 when no body is watching.
So it’s wrong to support someone who is in a different party than you even though you agree much more with their politics? Always vote the party line no matter what? Is that what you are telling us?
Dana Garrett said it best quite awhile back. You are all “sheep.”
If the RCCC were smart they would pull funding for this race so that Hoffman can win. Their girl is dead in the water.
If the RCCC were smart
Again with the hypotheticals.
If the RCCC were smart they would pull funding for this race so that Hoffman can win.
First of all, I see two different things in this statement. I could see the logic of pulling funding if they think she’s got no chance to win. That’s just the old “Don’t throw good money after bad.” However, that’s different than doing it so that Hoffman can win. That says they are now implicitly backing him. The only reason to do that would be if the Party is ready to concede itself to the wingnut fringe and officially cease to be a legitimate national party. I give the RCCC and the RNC enough credit that they’re not yet prepared to never get more than begrudging support from more than 20% of the population. They can toy with the fringe and throw them a bone once in a while (mostly because they can’t afford to turn them away), but the Party needs to be sure to keep at least one foot in the sanity-based reality that the majority of Americans inhabit.
Do we really know if all Scozzafava voters would go to Hoffman if Scozzafava withdrew? I don’t think that’s a given. The votes from a moderate Republican may go to the conservative Democrat instead. Hoffman may be too extreme for some people in the district.
Doesn’t NY-23 prove how important Dean’s 50-state strategy is? Imagine if the DNCC had conceded this race early because it’s a Republican district.
EVERYTHING proves how important the 50 state strategy is. *sigh*
has the DNCC been supporting/funding Owens? how much?
the poll results should read:
Doug Hoffman At 34%, Owens ar 29%, Scozzafava In Free-fall At 14%
sorry for the typo
I agree, UI, about the votes. The other possibility is that the Scozzafava votes just stay home and go to no one. My feeling has always been that the tea partiers are more likely to vote for a moderate (as the lesser of two evils over the Democrat) than the moderates are to vote for a tea partier. I also think the moderates are more likely to stay home in disgust. Just my thoughts, but I’d love to hear what our conservative friends here think about this. Am I right, or am I way off? (please try to limit it to this one topic 🙂 ) I really think this will be a major story over the next couple of years.
The plurality of the country is conservative. The only question is will the GOP win with the people or fade with a Constitution/Conservative type party taking its place. I think the GOP is stronger than it has been since 2004. My post on that will appear later today.
Scozzy the commie will stay in the race. I just think that it is nonsense to put 300K in attack ads against a conservative who will caucus with you and hold the seat. Just go neutral.
Scott,
hard to tell.
This is a special election so turnout will be way down. I’m not sure how “moderates” will vote but their turn out will be low. The people who show up will be your typical primary voters and people recently energized (conservative,anti-incumbant) by the events is washington.
Even if Scozzafava announced her withdrawl from the race, I don’t think that would remove her name from the ballot.
Prediction
Either: Hoffman wins or Owens wins with Hoffman second… and then Hoffman wins in 12 month (2010)
OK, I’m actually going to say this, but Lizard brought up a good point. In off-year elections like this, and even mid-term elections, moderates on both sides are more likely to stay home. The people who come out are generally older and/or politically motivated. Both categories fit the tea partiers. So this is a great opportunity for the far right candidates to do well, especially compared to last year, when there were a lot of Obama-motivated voters who will be missing this year (and probably next year). But about that poll…
The poll lizard was refering to, just so everyone knows, was commissioned by the Minuteman PAC, and the Minutemen are running ads for Hoffman. And the poll was of 366 people. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/politics_nation/2009/10/ny23_poll_hoffman_5.html
This comes on the heels of another poll done over the weekend commissioned by the Club for Growth, who, not surprisingly, are also endorsing and backing Hoffman. Also not surprisingly, Nate Silver has doubts about this poll as well. (I think someone might have linked to this yesterday. If so, sorry to be redundant again.)
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/10/reality-check-ny-23-poll-may-seek-to.html
Hey, I know polls of similar, dubious results. In those polls, the eventual loser was always 50-60% support. Go figure.
whenever you see poll results, the first question you have to ask is what was the sample…
for politics the only sample that really matters is “Likely Voters”.
not “adults”
not even “registered voters”
Just “Likely Voters” people who are going to show up on election day and express their opinion when is actually matters.
the trouble with polling the NY-23rd is trying to figure out who the likely voters are? what mix if R,I,and D should be in the sample and how do you account for the newly motivated?
Pollsters/Consultants are going to have a fielday analysing the results of this special as a tool for predicting the 2010 election.
“OK, I’m actually going to say this, but Lizard brought up a good point”
That’s one strike against you… the collective will not be pleased.
You’re the proverbial stopped clock. I’ll catch you again in 12 hours. 🙂
Wow, how much could be wrong with that poll? Including not report of MOE and 366 people? Really? Getting likely voters isn’t all that tough — there are good, effective screens for that that reputable pollsters use all of the time. Polling of the newly energized. likely voter was pretty much on target for the Obama campaign, for instance.
One thing that they’d have a hard time explaining is how these wingnut polls can come up with virtually the same number of undecideds but their own guy is in the lead.
I think that this is going to be a classic case of Wingnut Signaling. If the right people tell them anything at all, they’ll believe it unquestioningly.
Back to the polls, to its credit (fwiw), the Minuteman poll did say “likely voters”. As far as the sampling mix, I think a decent outfit should be able to figure out the R – D mix. The trick, as we touched on the other day, is the I’s. A good number of independants, if not Independants, are actually Republicans in hiding. Most are probably of the moderate, Smittypublican type. I have no doubt, though, that there are some who have left the party for the far right. Getting that mix accurately will separate the men from the boys, polling-wise speaking.
The Minuteman poll did indicate “likely voters” — I was responding to lizard’s gleeful wonderment at how any pollster could find a “likely voter” among the newly energized. It is difficult with a poll that releases no crosstabs to see what the wording of questions might mean, the question order or even how the current D-R-I spreads.
I’d still wonder about the large number of undecideds at this stage. 22 or 23% is pretty big a week out, I think.
The bottom line is that I take both of those polls with the same super-sized grain of salt that I do drug company studies. It’s amazing how often it happens that a study or poll done by someone with a skin in the game comes back positively for their side.