The "How can Sarah Palin..." questions dont really have an answer...

It's good to see this pissing contest go public. Every reasonably intelligent observer knows it's the Morons vs the Moderates in the GOP and the Morons are calling the tune, but so far the Moderates have just sucked it up, shut up and drifted along. Now it seems that the Mods are not going to go quietly, which will further stir up the loons which will lead to more fratricide. Pass the popcorn.

The Reactionary Party purged Jeffersonian Republicans decades ago, now they are purging the few Lincolnians they have. It's time for the prevailing Yahoos to kill the old elephant and end its suffering.

Strange to see "Washington Post" and "terrific piece" in the same sentence. But okay. I'll temporarily break from my boycott to read this article.

Ya know who is a Republican? Arlo Guthrie. And you know what his reason is? "Because there are already a lot of good Democrats."

This is a very interesting subject. I would really like to know alot more about it. The idea that the republicans could be so clueless to let this happen is a wonder to behold. If they really do fracture by alienating their moderates to the point that many of them will work against the party, 2010 could shape up better than 2006 or 2008. We really need to help these people feel welcome on our side of the aisle.

My observation - there is a civil war (though not so civil) in the Republican party. REAL Republicans are being purged! REAL is the acronym for Roosevelt (as in Teddy) Eisenhower and Abraham Lincoln. The party will go extinct if it can't return to the moderate, forward looking elements represented by the REAL Republican contingent of the party!

Lincoln looked past the economic institution of slavery. Roosevelt looked past the trusts and sponsored regulatory actions while recognizing the need to preserve national resources in a national park system, and Eisenhower looked past the interests of the military-industrial complex.

It seems the current line up of Beck, Limbaugh, McConnell and Boehner can't lead a wet papersack to the trash bin! -Kevo

I think Scozzafava and other Republicans at the state level in relatively moderate states like New York are genuinely shocked that their own little fortress, heretofore rather walled off from national party trends, has been breached.

Very good article from the Post.

And, Miss DeDe, come on "over". We'd love to have you and your husband join us!

"And, Miss DeDe, come on "over". We'd love to have you and your husband join us!"

That "we" doesn't include me by a long shot. She's a moderate republican only in the relative sense: she's for reproductive freedom and gay equality, but lock-step right-winger on pretty much everything else. The only real way she's different from Hoffman is that she's not a screaming back-stabbing loon.

The Democratic party already has enough republicans in democratic clothing; we don't need another. And for that matter, what few reasonable "moderates" the GOP still has need to stay there if the GOP is going to pull itself back from the brink. Prof. Krugman is absolutely right: what's happening to the GOP is not good for America.

I'm not sure why this is a surprise. Sarah Palin was like a black hole, completely devoid of knowledge. She played to raw emotions just like many Republicans before her. This is what the Republican party is. There are intellectuals behind the scenes but the folks driving home the message of the political, emotional puppets.

btw-has anyone ever heard Hoffman speak? I think they played a clip of him on the Daily Show and Stewart was right, he sounds like someone who spent the previous day drinking and listening to Beck and Limbaugh, and is repeating whatever he remembers.
Mostly just a string of wingnut/teabagger talking points that don't make much sense to begin with.

Wow, I so got something different out of this WaPo piece. I thought the writer was trying to portray Scozzafava as a petulant, sobby loser who only endorsed her Democratic opponent because Hoffman didn't call her up. I especially found the "ooh, look, someone left me a box of chocolates" remark that he stuck in there as both irrelevant and snarky, as if her only reactions could be petulance and vengeance.

A better writer would have cast her in a more favorable light, it seems to me. Scozzafava was the first major victim of the upcoming attempt of the Republican Party to clean itself of ideological impurity by scraping out the guts of its own party.

Did you ever think that you would miss Gerald Ford or even Bob Dole? I do.

I agree it was snarky. They were trying to make her look bad. But I ended up liking her anyway. Who wouldn't want to call the cops when being badgered by the Weekly Standard?

Why does the press -- print and internet -- seem to always show pictures of Sarah Palin smiling and staring off into the distance? Are these stock photos or from real events?

They make me think Palin's trying to draw the photographer's attention away from the fact she just got a run in her stockings and stepped in dog poo.

Ken Z...or even Richard Nixon...he gave us the EPA and the Women's rights amendment , in addition to banning cigarrette advertising...flamin liberal by todays standard

"There is a lot of us who consider ourselves Republicans, of the Party of Lincoln," she said. "If they don't want us with them, we're going to work against them."

Good for you, Dede. You go girl, and you take the remaining few Repubs that identify with Lincoln with you.

I like the idea of calling yourselves REAL Republicans.

every now and again it is important to read a story like this just as a reminder that politics often involves actual people, not just chess pieces.

it sucks, and explains why a lot of good people avoid such service, that these total outsiders who know nothing about Scozzafava other than she is less-far-right than they are show up with a carpetbagging candidate, truckloads of money, and a really psychopathic bloodlust and just trash someone who never intended to be part of a civil war or even larger national issues. she was just a local, trying to do something for very local, parochial issues.

i may not agree with her on most issues, but it certainly seems like the worst one can say about Scozzafava was that she was naive. that hardly deserved the treatment she got, and dismissiveness she gets, from the likes of Dick Armey.

sometimes politics is just ugly.

Agreed with Kenneth G. Cavness -- the WaPo article was a sexist hit piece against a female moderate GOPer, but that is what makes it a WaPo article.

Also agreed with Shade Tail -- while the self-destruction of the GOP is good entertainment, it is neither good for the country, nor good for progressives. The collapse of the GOP means that BigBiz will continue to increase its strangle-hold on the Dems to the detriment of real people, and refugees abandoning the GOP for the Dems merely serves to pull the political centroid of the Dems to the right.

If the US had a modern political system with proportionate voting, then perhaps we progressives could abandon the Dems for, eg, the Greens without worrying about the spoiler factor, but until then we're stuck with the Demopublican circus.

"That "we" doesn't include me by a long shot." Shadetail @ 3:19 PM.

If the collapse of the present Republican Party depends on people such as Scozzafava defecting into the Democratic Party, what's not to like?
Republican Party sinks into something not unlike the old Progressive Party; on a lot of ballots, but doesn't pick up enough votes to make a splash nationally and finally merges into the party formed by the conservative Democrats when it splits off from the mainstream Democrats. Which party is then populated by those such as Ms. Scozzafava. A new Democrat-Republican party (w/hat tip to Mr. Jefferson's Republican-Democrat Party).
Voila!

I have read that the Democrat that was elected was less liberal than the Repug, opposing issues such as gay rights, and likely to go with the blue dogs against real health care reform. I am not sure we have much to celebrate here. The people like Krugman who worry about the futeure of the two party system may be on point. If all we have is the extreme right and wishy-washy Lieberman-like Dems, the middle ground is still going to be way too conservative for me.

A party by any other name would whither and die....

And speaking of names, folks: why don't they just rename themselves the "Tea Party" and be done with it. This is certainly not the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

Is it the goal of these clowns that they destroy the GOP in order that it may be rebuilt in their hideous image? If that is the case they're in for more-than-a-few surprises. That silly party is already "in their image". Are they serious when they imply that they wish to move it even further to the right? How "far right" can one move before one falls off of the face of the earth? Are they serious?

Watching the utter implosion of the Grand Old Party in the last year has been the gift that just keeps giving and giving. Someone pinch me!

http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

"If the collapse of the present Republican Party depends on people such as Scozzafava defecting into the Democratic Party, what's not to like?"

Doug, I linked to what's not to like back in my post. No matter how far the GOP descends into bat-shit, they're still a major political party in a two-party system. All the GOP have to do to make gains in the next election is sit back and let the democrats prove that they are too incompetent to accomplish anything. And if the democrats *do* fail, as they're making a good try at doing, the lunatics and morons could very well get themselves back in charge, or at least become a much larger minority.

As things stand, that is the last thing America can afford.