Doug Hoffman's Lesson: Palin And Limbaugh Don't Win Elections


Doug Hoffman lost his election last night. He was supported by a
plurality of talk radio entertainers, and a majority of former
half-term governors of Alaska, but it wasn't enough.

An obscure quirk of constitutional law says you also need votes from
voters.

This is the same cruel hurdle that tripped up three of his other
biggest supporters, Gary Bauer, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani, all of
whom ran for President of the United States, but failed the "getting
votes" test, because everyone hates their guts.

With their help, and a million dollars from the Club for Growth, Doug
Hoffman lost a part of New York State that had voted Republican since
the best way to get from Albany to Buffalo was by canal.

Not bad for a first try.

Doug Hoffman didn't just have money to burn and the staunch support of
Facebooking frost bunnies, Fox News and the Ghosts of Vanity Campaigns
Past. He also had coots on the ground; an army of volunteers from the
tea bag movement, the 9/12 Project and the fanatic anti-choice fringe.

The problem was, they could shout at the polling places as loud as they
wanted, and they did, but they didn't live there, so they weren't
allowed to vote.

There's probably a lesson to that. Something about politics being
local.

And beyond that, about the people who do live there resenting being
told what to do.

Rush Limbaugh predicted that Hoffman would win. In fact, Hoffman's
victory was such a foregone conclusion yesterday that Rush had already
moved on to mocking Democrats spinning their loss.

Rush:

If Hoffman wins -- and polls suggest that he will -- the race there
will be dismissed as an outlier...


Folks, I want you to print these words out. I want you to get the
transcript off my website. I want you to print these out, I want you
to distribute them, I want you to carry them with you, and we'll
just see how close I am to being right. (When Hoffman wins) the
State-Run Media will say, "New York-23, the race is more about the
demise of the Republican Party and anger on the right than Obama or
his policies."

Print it out. Distribute it. And carry it with you, just to see how
close he was to being right: Not within a zillion light years.

Rush couldn't be right, (and he can never be wrong) because he's
debating a straw man from the future. His point is that X would say Y.
And that's always his point: If the thing he imagines happening
happens, liberals will react in a way he imagines, and it'll be just
like them, too. Except they never do, because it doesn't, so they
can't, not that they would have. But I wouldn't put it past them, since
they do it every time.

But not today. Imaginary liberals won't be saying New York-23 doesn't
matter. Rush will.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/dud-baby-dud-the-lesson-o_b_345049.html
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