I would love for Hoffman to win. It would send the GOP further down the crank nutjob road they seem so committed to these days. Bring that **** on. As long as they don't actually manage to kill the president, stuff like Doug Hoffman is just good news for Democrats.
If the latest polls are any indication, you are going to get your wish. I am hoping Hoffman wins too, but my analysis of the situation is quite a bit different from yours.
Yeah, the GOP made a huge mess of what once was a surefire district. That Hoffman even stands a chance there is absolutely hilarious. A win for the crazies like Hoffman would provide more fodder for jokes, and just illustrate the problems the GOP is having right now.
I largely agree with that. Of course the crazy comment is just partisan name calling, but the I am on board with the rest of what you said. The local Republican leaders made a bad, back-room decision by nominating a liberal, at least in Republican terms, to run as the party candidate for this seat. This is a conservative district. It has been held by a Republicans since 1871. That is not a typo. I did not mean to type 1971. Since 1871 this district has been Republican. The Republican party made a mistake in nominating this candidate. What is really amazing to me is the effect that Sarah Palin's endorsement of Hoffman had on this race. I know you lefties do not like Palin, but let's try to have a rational look at this for a moment if we can. Palin endorsed Hoffman last Wednesday or Thursday. Before her endorsement, Hoffman was in third place in this race. By the end of the weekend, he was clearly in the lead. Can anyone remember a time when an endorsement carried that much effect? Wow. Even if you do not like Palin or her politics, her political muscle was on clear display in this district this week. The events that have occurred in this race are a problem for the Republican party, as you suggested. They are apparently still under the illusion that they are in control and calling the shots regarding who will be supported by Republican voters. As far as I can tell, most conservatives do not identify themselves closely with the Republican party anymore. I sure don't. Conservatives certainly do not look to the Republican party for direction regarding who to vote for. And their nomination of Dede Scozzafava as the Republican candidate in this race has made that problem more accute. And if Hoffman wins, as he appears poised to do, conservatives are going to push hard in support of other such candidates, regardless of what the so-called leaders of this group think. The Republican party did indeed screw things up for themselves badly with their choices in this contest.
what is it with NJ dems and changing the rules, when the outcome doesn't go (or appear likely to go) their way? [rquoter]Democrats Ask New Jersey Secretary of State to Ignore Mismatched Signatures on Absentee Ballot Requests This year, New Jersey’s registered voters can request a mail-in ballot for any reason. Before 2005, voters needed to provide a reason for why they needed an absentee ballot. The state received about 150,000 absentee ballot applications this year. On about 2,300 of those applications so far, the signature on the request form did not match the signature on the voter’s registration forms with the state. In a development that is depressingly predictable, the New Jersey Democratic Party is asking the state to provide provisional ballots for all these voters. Those ballots, could, presumably, be used to overcome any narrow lead by Republican Chris Christie over Democrat Jon Corzine on Election Day. A mass distribution of provisional ballots, at the request of a political party, would represent a significant change from established law. Currently, when a county clerk rejects an absentee ballot request, they try to contact the voter, through mail, by phone, and in some cases, they make an attempt to contact the voter in person. And a person who has spoken to some of New Jersey’s county clerks says they’re granting wide latitude on signature styles; for them to reject a ballot request because of the signature, it has to be dramatically different from the one on file. Could some of these cases be the circumstance an election official misjudging natural deviation in two handwriting samples from the same person? Certainly, and that's why the current system has clerks reaching out to the rejected voters (presuming they actually exist) to sort out the discrepancy. But Democrats want to short-circuit the established methods of sorting out the problem, and in fact ban rejections based on signature mismatches entirely. Paul P. Josephson, a lawyer representing the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, wrote to Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells, asking her to “instruct County Clerks not to deny (vote by mail) applications on the basis of signature comparison alone.” Josephson claims “the data reveal a troubling disparity in rejection rates - from hundreds of applications in Atlantic (271 rejections, or 5.84 percent) and Hudson (362, or 4.13 percent) to just a handful in counties such as Hunterdon (6, or .20 percent) and Mercer (35, or .49 percent). We also note that staff and unaffiliated voters are being rejected at a far higher ratio than Republicans by a ratio of three-to-one.” But a source who has seen the data disagrees, contending the number of rejections are consistently proportional to the number of absentee ballots requested. This source described the rate of rejections as within a normal range, and he saw no clustering in particular regions. Josephson contends, “even if the county clerks notify voters by mail that their applications have been rejected, too many of those voters will not have an opportunity to correct the situation.” But besides the County Clerks’ efforts to contact voters laid out above, those who have not received an absentee ballot will still be able to vote on Election Day. Democrats have never made this request before, not even in 2008, where many more New Jersey residents were voting through absentee ballots. Of course, that year Democrats Barack Obama and Frank Lautenberg were expected to win the statewide races handily. Last year, the state party had no objections to the actions of county clerks; now, the party's counsel fears that the county clerk staff “may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis.” Strangely, these same county clerk staffers managed to handle this year’s primary elections in New Jersey without any major complaints. The fears of absentee ballot fraud in New Jersey is not theoretical or far-fetched. Earlier this year, Atlantic City Councilman Marty Small and 13 people who worked on his unsuccessful mayoral campaign “were indicted on charges they conspired to commit election fraud during the June Democratic primary through a variety of schemes involving messenger absentee ballots, state Attorney General Anne Milgram announced in Trenton.” One of those workers has already pled guilty. Five workers were indicted on similar charges in Essex County in August. Suspicious minds see the letter as an attempt to create a pool of emergency votes to be used if Christie holds a small lead on Election Night. The Secretary of State has not yet responded to the Democrats’ request.[/rquoter]
Some people in this country are openly appalled by voter fraud in third world countries, such as what was seen in the recent elections in Afghanistan. But it is very difficult to maintain any moral authority to be able to criticize this kind of behavior when certain elements in our political system openly engage in this same kind of corrupt behavior. These people should be ashamed at themselves. I hope Glenn Beck and Fox News shine the spotlights on this disgraceful behavior and draw people's attention to it in a very loud and public way. I suggest Fox News, because as we have seen so many times before, none of the other major MSM organizations are likely to be willing to do it.
Mojoman, I know that you know why the left does not like Palin and try to stick it to her every chance they get, they are afraid of her, she is a direct threat to Obama. I agree with you about the Republican party, they have not been conservative since the days of Reagan. They're always sending me solicitations in the mail asking for money, I wrote back and asked them: tell me why should I send my hard-earned money to you weasels, do you even know what you and your party stand for anymore? I have not heard back from them since!
That is exactly how I feel. Great post. They are obviously afraid of her. If they were truly confident about the substance of all of their hateful and belittling remarks towards her, they would regard her as completely irrelevant and they would ignore her. But a better description of the attitudes of most of the outspoken left wing pundits towards Sarah Palin would be "obsessed". That is pretty much the opposite of finding her irrelevant. And the emotional response that she evokes from the left is completely off the charts. I have never seen anyone who evokes such a response from the libs. Not Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush or Karl Rove. No one. I am curious, how did you know that I know that?
that is not worse. and were there marches by 10s of thousands of liberals that contained signs calling her that? nope.
