Douthat Again

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02douthatsub.html

The gist of his article: Third party candidacy is good at the local level. Among his points: Doug Hoffman did a huge favor for NY-23 by holding left-drifting Republicans accountable.

But the symbolism of Hoffman's candidacy reinforces the socially conservative far-right litmus test of Republican candidates...to be a true Repub, now you have to fall in line with Sarah Palin? NY-23 is a moderately conservative district, and in the end there was no moderately conservative candidate to choose from. Maybe the message got out that you can't be too left or too right to win a seat as a Republican candidate, but it ended up costing them reprentation in Congress.

For someone who writes about the joys of 3rd party candidacy, way to not mention VT except to reference Dean's presidential campaign. We have a 3rd party Senator and consistently have Independents running for Governor, which actually hasn't worked out too well for us imo.