Liz Benjamin, a pretty good reporter for the NY Daily News Politics Blog, has an interesting article up about Scozzafava's "non-endorsement".
Here's the lede:
Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava's decision not to endorse either of her opponents after suspending her bid for ex-Rep. John McHugh's seat was a tactical move made in concert with Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman's campaign, a source close to Scozzafava confirmed.
More after the flip...
As for the reasoning behind this turn of events:
There was some concern that supporters of Scozzafava's more moderate brand of Republicanism would be so turned off if she publicly announced an endorsement of the man who has been hammering her as a Pelosi-esque liberal that it would them into the arms of Democratic nominee Bill Owens.
snip
Also, if Hoffman were to accept Scozzafava's endorsement after so harshly criticizing her all these weeks, it might upset his supporters on the right.
Hence, the less-than-generous statement Hoffman released in response to the news that Scozzafava was ending her campaign, which makes no mention of her at all.
The fact that Hoffman makes no mention of Dede's name in his statement is truely odd...but it may very will be that the one thing tea-baggers do is attack, attack, attack.
As Liz points out, this all comes on the heals of George Pataki's endorsement; an endorsement whole-heartedly embraced by Hoffman ...and in many respects, Pataki is more liberal than Scozzafava.
To venture an answer to a couple of questions in Pontificator's earlier Scozzafava Diary,
Was she worried about Hoffman actually winning in a 3-way race? Or did the Republican Party tell her to get out of Hoffman's way so he could win?
My take is that she was dropping like a stone and she has a political career here in NY to look out for, so she must have done some wall reading...as well as the fact that the NRCC pulled their support earlier on Friday.
As for the ballot question, she WILL be on it, as the deadline for withdrawal was September 25.
This is a pretty interesting turn of events and now the transformation of the Republican Party into the Crazy TeaBagger Party is complete.
The Media meme will be that Sarah Palin is now the KingMaker in the GOP and, as a result, it's now the Party of Palin. And THAT is mind boggling.
I'm ordering my pop corn by the truckload, because the next few are going to be an amazing couple of years to watch.