Yes, it’s time for the upside-down elephant. The Stupid Party is at it again. The subject of today’s column: An abomination in the NY23 special congressional race to replace former GOP Rep. John McHugh, who accepted President Obama’s Army Secretary position. Way to go, Beltway GOP establishment. Grass-roots fiscal conservatives are fired up over ACORN, the SEIU, tax-and-spend radicals. Grass-roots social conservatives are battling radical abortion and gay marriage policies. You have been asking movement conservatives to give you money to fight the ACORN-friendly, union-pandering, tax-and-spend, radical Democrats.

Then you use their money to try and elect Dede Scozzafava, an ACORN-friendly, union-pandering, tax-and-spend radical Republican. And you use that money to fight Doug Hoffman, a viable, bona fide conservative candidate in the race who is closing the gap in the polls.

Watch your campaign coffers dry up, NRCC.

The GOP establishment: Always, always its own worst enemy.

Get out your air sickness bags. Guess who endorsed Scozzafava this morning? Newt Gingrich. I hear Al Sharpton and Nancy Pelosi approve!

Fight the GOP Beltway establishment. Contribute to Doug Hoffman today.
****

An ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

Here’s the dirty little secret about political candidates and officeholders labeled by the mainstream media as “moderate Republicans”: There’s usually nothing moderate about them. Consider the case of “moderate Republican” Dede Scozzafava, the GOP nominee in the New York 23rd congressional district’s special election.

Handpicked by local party pooh-bahs and supported by Beltway GOP leaders, Scozzafava is vying to replace former GOP Rep. John McHugh, who abandoned his seat to accept President Obama’s nomination as Army Secretary. There’s certainly no urgency to tack left. The upstate New York district is as safe a Republican district as they come. The GOP has triumphed in every election there since 1871. Obama eked out a victory in the district last fall, but the Democrats have no real traction on the ground.

And the mood of the electorate near and far is far from electric blue. It’s not just Tea Party activists and health care town hall protesters displaying discontent with Big Government in Washington. A recent Gallup Poll reported that self-identified conservatives now outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states — and that more Americans nationwide now say they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

Scozzafava is an abortion rights advocate who favors gay marriage. It would be one thing if Scozzafava balanced that social liberalism with fiscal conservatism. But as a state assemblywoman, she voted for massive tax increases, Democratic budgets and a $180 million state bank bailout. She also supported the trillion-dollar federal stimulus package — which every House Republican voted against.

More troubling, Scozzafava in past elections has embraced the ballot line of the Working Families Party — a socialist outfit whose political DNA is intertwined with scandal-ridden ACORN. ACORN and the WFP have shared office space in New York City, Arkansas and Illinois. ACORN head Bertha Lewis, a close Scozzafava friend and political supporter, wears a second hat as vice chairman of the WFP. The WFP has been listed in ACORN documents dating back to 2000 as an “affiliate.”

Under fire for her cozy relations with organizations that have shown lifelong hostility toward the Republican Party, Scozzafava now claims she would have voted to de-fund ACORN in the wake of the multiple BigGovernment.com sting videos showing ACORN employees advising undercover journalists on how to evade tax laws, lie on housing applications and smuggle underage illegal alien prostitutes.

But there’s another inextricably linked ACORN and WFP affiliate that Scozzafava would not likely disavow: Big Labor.

Refresher: The Service Employees International Union is co-located with several key ACORN offices across the country. ACORN founder Wade Rathke founded influential SEIU Local 100. As John Wilson reported in the New York Post this spring, the WFP’s largest donors are the SEIU, which pitched in more than $300,000, and the teachers union, which donated $200,000. These organizations have worked together to increase left-wing political clout, undermine capitalism and ensure “social justice” on the public’s dime.

Scozzafava’s husband is a leading upstate New York union organizer. She supports the federal “card-check” legislation that would massively boost union rolls — and Democratic voting rolls — at the expense of rank-and-file workers’ free choice. And for that matter, at the expense of Republican electoral prospects. Card check is the key to a Democratic majority in perpetuity. Big Labor bosses have said as much.

Movement conservatives and limited government activists are battling the establishment GOP over its endorsement of Scozzafava’s candidacy. The Club for Growth, former GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson and others have lined up behind a truly mainstream and viable candidate — Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman.

Meanwhile, “moderate Republican” Scozzafava has earned the enthusiastic endorsement of far-left blog entrepreneur and political strategist Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who runs the Daily Kos website. He enthused that Scozzafava has “been willing to raise taxes when budgets require it, and is to the left of most Democrats on social issues.”

That’s not moderation. That’s extremist fringe. This race isn’t a fight over the heart and soul of the Republican Party. It’s a battle over its brain.

***

Jeri Thompson nails it: “The fact that Republican Party leaders in NY-23 and the NRCC ignored just about everything that has taken place over the past six months — the fight over the Obama stimulus package, the tea party rallies, the health care debate — and put Scozzafava on the ballot, indicates that we need more, not less, common sense and conservative values in the Republican Party. Hoffman represents conservatives’ best chance to send a national message to the Republican Party that they are a force to be reckoned with, and that Hoffman appears to have the energy from the grassroots to pull off a win and help lay the groundwork for a successful 2010 election cycle. As one Hoffman supporter told me yesterday, ‘The feeling of momentum is palpable. The race is between Doug and the Democrat…we hope Dede won’t be a spoiler for conservatives in this race.’”

The Washington Times spotlights the battle: Tea Party conservatives vs. the GOP.

Bill Kristol:

A new poll in the November 3 special election for the congressional seat, NY-23, vacated by Army Secretary John McHugh, confirms what knowledgeable observers have suspected for a while: The candidacy of the official Republican nominee, liberal Dede Scozzafava, selected by local party officials and supported by the national Republican establishment, is collapsing. The Republican who has a real chance to defeat Democrat Bill Owens is Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate—a Republican with a profile far more like the popular McHugh, and one far more in sync with the district. What’s more, if elected, Hoffman would caucus in Congress with Republicans—whereas Scozzafava could well pull an Arlen Specter and defect to the Democrats.

Two weeks ago, the Siena poll had Scozzafava at 35%, Owens at 28%, and Hoffman at 16%. Now Scozzafava, at 29%, trails Owens by 4—and leads Hoffman, who has risen to 23%, by only 6, compared to her 19 point lead over Hoffman two weeks ago. This despite a full-court press for Scozzafava by the state and national GOP establishment—including press releases from the National Republican Congressional Committee attacking Hoffman.

The new poll shows Democrats are coming home to Owens, and that Hoffman is leading among independents. (Scozzafava is running third among independents.) This suggests he’s a far more viable candidate than Scozzafava in the stretch run, especially if Republicans were to begin to coalesce around him—which might well happen if the GOP establishment stopped propping up Scozzafava.