NY23 a Repudiation of SoCon "Maximalists"?

Maybe. Maybe not.

According to blogging heavyweights Don Surber and Roger L. Simon, Owens beat Hoffman due to Hoffman's focus on social conservative issues like abortion & opposition to gay marriage.

Silly me. I thought that card check was a fiscal conservative issue. And the Club for Growth? Not exactly a darling of the SoCon set, especially here in Iowa where they went after Mike Huckabee in 2007 with pliers and a blowtorch. Huck even took to referring to them as the "Club for Greed", and many of the social conservatives that Simon and Surber are afraid of consider the Club to be "just as bad as ACORN". I even saw speculation that Huck's unwillingness to endorse Hoffman until the last minute was because of his strong backing from the Club for Growth.

Did some voters sour on Hoffman because he was too strong on social issues for their tastes? Maybe so, but he wasn't exactly a one trick pony. His campaign was strongly focused on less federal spending, opposition to card check & definite opposition to Obamacare.

I thought the "Maximalists" were the only ones who were willing to cut off their nose to spite their face?

(I don't know if "Maximalists" has the right ring for my taste. How about "Hardcases"? SoCon Morons should sing out in the comments about their choice of a nickname. After all, we're not CNN: we're not going to call you "teabaggers" or "poop chuters" or any other smarmy sexual innuendo....unless you WANT us to call you by that name.)

UPDATE: Drew sends along this tweet from commenter "justkarl".

[re Maximalists] NY-23 was rep'ed by John McHugh, who had a 100% NRLC rating, and a 0% NARAL rating.

Well, there you go. These out of district "maximalists" were selling a MORE CONCENTRATED brand of religious snake oil than the former Republican representative.....who had a 100% rating on pro-life issues and a 0% rating on pro-choice issues. Yeah, that's the ticket.

posted by Russ from Winterset at 08:10 AM

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