NY-23: Buy the ticket, take the ride

Brief synopsis:

President Barack Obama appoints US Representative John McHugh (R-NY) to serve as Secretary of the Army, bringing on a special election in New York's 23rd district.

State legislator Dierdre Scozzafava and accountant Doug Hoffman seek the Republican Party's nomination. Scozzafava wins; Hoffman pouts, runs on the Conservative Party line. The GOP's "conservative" faction pouts, and defects, with him.

Hoffman's campaign quickly picks up enough steam to "spoil" a Republican victory, and looks set to just possibly actually win the seat for him. Scozzafava drops out of the race ... and endorses Democratic candidate Bill Owens.

And why not? Owens certainly isn't a Republican ... but he's not pretending to be one. Which makes him about 1000% more honest than Doug Hoffman, who called himself a Republican for exactly as long as it was convenient to his ambitions to do so, then jumped the GOP ship as soon as his ambitions and the Republican Party's ambitions dipped below 100% correlation.

In the alternative universe inhabited by Robert Stacy McCain, serving as a Republican state legislator and receiving the Republican Party's nomination for Congress makes one a "Republican in Name Only," while putting a torpedo into the GOP's chances of retaining a US House seat makes one a "real Republican."

This hallucination interpretation of reality makes sense to McCain because he conflates the Republican Party (a party of big government from its very beginning, the party which originated "progressivism" -- the party, in other words, of Dede Scozzafava) with a populist splinter school of "conservatism" that's been effectively homeless since it left the party of its upbringing (the Democratic Party) in the last half of the 20th century.

To everyone living in the real world, on the other hand, it only makes sense that the establishment Republican candidate would, having been forced out of the race, endorse the other establishment party's candidate, not the candidate who destroyed her candidacy and broke her party's hold on the district.

As always, the good news remains that there is no good news for the Republican Party in all this. If Hoffman wins, the GOP is on the Peckerwood Populist leash for the next few years and loses, loses, loses. If Owens wins, the GOP loses a seat and goes to war with itself and loses, loses, loses. Either way, third parties in general gain. Gotta love it.

NY-23: Scozzafava concedes

Now things get really interesting.

For the next four days, at any rate, the GOP's "conservative"^* faction has broken the Republican Party to its leash (and they're whooping it up, too, you betcha).

After that ... well, that kind of depends on what happens Tuesday.

If Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman wins the election, the "conservatives" will likely exercise de facto control of the GOP at least through 2012. That probably means four more years for Barack Obama, but the Republican establishment can't afford to leave an opening for additional "third party" outbreaks unless it wants to become a "third party" itself. Being the minority opposition party in a two-party system beats complete disintegration. Of course, closing off a "conservative" exodus to a third party may well amount to hanging up a "don't let the door hit you in the ass" sign for other types of Republicans (libertarian-leaning ones, for example).

If Democrat Bill Owens wins, on the other hand, the situation will get a lot more fluid. GOP establishment types will have plenty of ammo for a sort of drawn-out Night of the Long Knives versus the ringleaders of the "conservative" defection, and all-out war for control of the Republican Party is a distinct possibility. Which, again, probably means four more years for Barack Obama and definitely enhances the prospect of one or more third parties tearing big, bloody chunks out of the GOP's rotting carcass.

There's just no good outcome in this for the GOP. If you hear music in the background, that's the fat lady and the world's smallest violinist tuning up for the Big Shew. Good stuff, Maynard!

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*: I've started putting scare quotes around "conservative" in the context of the NY-23 race because it's not evident that the ... zeitgeist, for lack of a better word ... of the movement driving the Hoffman candidacy is responsive to that term as normally used (i.e. Goldwaterite, Buckleyite, Reaganite, etc.). "Right-wing populism" /= "conservatism."