FoxNews Calls it For Owens

49-46%. It's over.

Owens killed Hoffman in Scozzer's home area. She threw the race to the Democrat.

Yeah, great call on her, New York County Republican chairs. She conducts herself with so much "forthrightness." Great pick. Great, great pick.

A final update from Drew, which I was going to post before I saw the race had been called:

Rob Ryan is on now and is saying it's still close and may not be called tonight.

He's starting to spin it as a "big win for the Conservative Party and Doug Hoffman" considering where the race was 3 weeks ago.

Moral victory talk is never good.

A Positive Take-Away from... Allah? He's actually upbeat.

Points to take away from the loss: (1) PPP’s last poll was way, waaaay off; (2) Scozzafava’s endorsement must have had some impact on her supporters, as it erased the five-point lead Hoffman held in the last Siena poll after she dropped out; (3) third-party challenges, while sometimes warranted, are a very risky proposition (attention Glenn Beck!); (4) the win in New Jersey, where The One staked his own political capital in campaigning for Corzine, was huge compared to the loss here; and (5) as I said over the weekend, the actual result of this race is unimportant. The point in torpedoing Scozzafava and swinging the GOP behind Hoffman was to send a message to the Republican leadership that only fiscal conservatives will be tolerated henceforth, and that message has been sent even if Owens wins a squeaker. The loss is disappointing, but it’s a detail on otherwise great night.

Although we lost, I repeat my previous statement that this was cost-free and therefore helpful move. It's "teaching the GOP a lesson" in a smart way, in a single election (for a term that will last only one year), that will send a short sharp shock that while we may accept RINOs where we absolutely have to, we damnsure won't be accepting them where we can win with a conservative candidate.

We're not just going to support liberals just to win; what is the point of "winning" then?

Obviously a conservative candidate -- one of the in-district conservative candidates actually favored by many of the GOP county committees -- would have carried this district easily.

Instead, people decided to play it cute with games about having a woman candidate, having someone "the money" was happy with, and doing favors for some stupid GOP chairwoman's BFF Dede Scozzofava.

And the GOP can see there will be bloody revolts if this happens again. And that there will, in fact, be money for a more conservative candidate, too.

posted by Ace at 11:56 PM

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