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When dismal polls forced Dede Scozzafava out of the NY23 congressional race, the mainstream media were quick to interpret what had happened in a way that was unflattering to the GOP, and they have continued in the same vein after the election. In the New York Times, Adam Nagourney and Jeremy Peters wrote that Scozzafava's views "might not be in keeping with much of the national party, but are more reflective of the district." The Washington Post agreed that she "seemed a good fit for a moderate district but was out of step with national Republicans." And Thomas Fitzgerald in the Philadelphia Inquirer said that the race "had become a knife fight between conservative Republican purists and pragmatists over the future of the party." The thrust was clear: a moderate district wanted a Republican moderate, but the intolerant conservative orthodoxy intervened to enforce ideological purity.

But none of this was true. Scozzafava was not what the district wanted, as soon became obvious when polls showed local Republicans abandoning Scozzafava in droves once they had a chance to vote for Hoffman. The revolt against her candidacy began locally as soon as she was nominated, and it had been well known that the local Conservative party would run a candidate against her (but against none of her local competitors for the nomination) if the GOP ran Scozzafava. Nor was it true that she was a Republican moderate. How many GOP moderates do you know who are for card check, were endorsed by Acorn, the AUW, and the Daily Kos, were offered the Democratic nomination for the race, have been attacked by a Democrat opponent as too liberal, and have a voting record to the left of many Democrats? Scozzafava gave the answer to this question herself when she endorsed Democrat Owens rather than the now GOP approved Hoffman. And this was no Blue Dog: Owens was Pelosi's pick and he supports the Pelosi health care bill, unlike many in the caucus he has now joined. Nor was it true that her candidacy opened a split in the GOP; to the contrary, once the details of Scozzafava's leftist record became known the party united with remarkable speed, and the avalanche of high profile endorsements for Hoffman included both conservatives and moderates across the nation.

Where does the damaging and completely counterfactual mainstream press narrative come from? Sadly, it was given currency by a leading Republican: Newt Gingrich, who solemnly assured the nation on Fox News that Scozzafava was the top choice in every one of no less than four separate meetings in the district; that the eleven Republican county chairs had chosen her unanimously; and that her record was "adequately conservative in an upstate New York district." (He carefully avoided mentioning card check, Acorn, the Democrat nomination, etc., since those would have made his characterization of her as conservative look rather foolish.) He concluded: aren't the people of upstate New York allowed to pick their candidate? Stopping them from doing so, he suggested, was a "purge" of Republicans we disagree with.

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