Hoffman is to Scozzafava as Rick is to... Kay?

The eyes of Texas are on NY-23. If Hoffman can pull out the victory over the Democrat Owens now that liberal Republican Scozzafava has withdrawn... if Hoffman wins I think we will see a lot of attention on finding "the next big thing" and as Lt. Aldo Raine would say, "I want my scalps."

Charlie Crist is starting to feel some serious heat in his senate race against Marco Rubio... Rubio is considered to be the conservative in the race while Crist supported the Obama stimulus package and is seen as more of a Republican in name only by some of the influential conservative base....

I think earlier this year we saw the Arlen Specter versus Pat Toomey primary as another example. Back in 2004 Bush endorsed Specter which helped put him over the top... now it became obvious that Specter would lose so he switched parties and became a Democrat...

Other races to watch might include the Republican primaries out in California to replace Arnold and even the senate race in Utah...

Texas could see this come here as well...

Chuck Todd agrees (link). Excerpt follows...

So which path does the Republican Party take as we head into 2010? As of right now, it looks like the NY-23 one (even though McDonnell is about to do something that Jerry Kilgore, George Allen, Jim Gilmore, and John McCain didn’t do this century: win in the battleground state of Virginia). On Saturday, Marco Rubio, who’s taking on the more moderate Charlie Crist in next year’s Florida Senate primary, delivered this message to conservatives on National Review Online: The “developments in New York's 23rd Congressional District should send an encouraging message to conservatives everywhere. It is not only right and necessary to stand up for our principles; it is also an appealing strategy to Americans yearning for less government and more fiscal restraint in Washington.” The conservative-vs.-moderate battle also will play out next year in Texas (where Kay Bailey Hutchison is taking on Rick Perry) and in Utah (where Sen. Bob Bennett is receiving a challenge from the right). And don’t forget that this divide already forced Sen. Arlen Specter switch parties earlier this year.

Democrat Donna Brazile sees the same thing in Texas (link). Excerpt follows...

If the GOP is not able to bring all its factions under the same tent, the civil war could easily spread beyond New York and into Florida, Texas, California and beyond.

In Florida, GOP Gov. Charlie Crist has picked up a challenger in conservative former House Speaker Marco Rubio. Texas will feature a battle between incumbent GOP Gov. Rick Perry and GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson. (Perry is seen as the "real" conservative in the race, but don't tell that to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who recently signaled that he will stump for Hutchinson.) And in California, businessman Al Ramirez is thinking about challenging Republican-backed candidate Carly Fiorina in her bid to unseat Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer.

Kay is not nearly as liberal as Dede Scozzafava, but she is viewed by many as insufficiently conservative while Rick is out there as a national figure standing up to the Obama administration. Rick even endorsed Doug Hoffman while Kay chose not to take sides...

The RedState.com community... whose chieftain Erick Erickson endorsed Rick... has sided up with Rick over Kay for the most part (link). A lot of conservatives who blog around the country are seeing this as a real line in the sand moment... libNOT is a good example of a blog that is looking at Kay as a less than conservative Republican (link). Excerpt follows...

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R) who is leaving the senate in order to run for governor of Texas recently attached her name to $1.6 billion in earmark/pork barrel projects for her state!

When are these dopey Republicans going to learn??

I think Kay made a huge mistake in defending all of her pork so strongly... it earned her that terrible porker of the month award which just keeps getting play in the blog-o-sphere. Kay is also going to have a tough time if pro life is one of the major themes in this race...

The Daily Beast blog sez (link). Excerpt follows...

Watch out, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Locked in a Republican primary battle for governor of Texas, and unwilling to say women should go to jail for their abortions, she is the next duck in the barefoot and pregnant shooting gallery. All the coverage has been about the conservative attack on the Republican establishment. But Scozzafava’s defeat and the mounting campaign against Hutchison reveals a fascinating and underreported problem for the Republicans: They will only run women who will say that women should not control their reproductive fates. Although there are many male Republican candidates who easily embrace this position, politically accomplished women who believe in criminal abortion are rare, even in the Republican Party. And the ones who surface are likely to be, well, rogue.

The scene was set the day Hutchison announced her candidacy for the governorship of Texas last January. Just down the street, the incumbent governor, Rick Perry, who has shown no signs of stepping aside, was addressing the Texas Rally for Life. Perry had already started attacking Hutchison for not being anti-abortion enough. A few days later, Sarah Palin stepped in and announced her support for the anti-abortion Perry.

Hutchison’s faint liberalism on this one issue sure took her out of the running for V.P. in 2008. The Republicans could have chosen Senator Hutchison—a sophisticated and well-educated woman who would doubtless have played well on the national stage—but wound up with Sarah Palin. She may be a media darling and a political terror now, but all the polling around the actual election of 2008 reflected that her manifest ignorance and amateurishness played a substantial role in the Republican defeat.

I think Kay's campaign has been trying in vain to prove she is to the right of Rick... it is just not a believable theme... yet in doing so they are alienating a lot of their possible crossover voters... Kay's bread and butter is moderate voters. She is going to lose them if she keeps trying to out flank Rick on the right... but at the same time if she doesn't get those conservatives on her side she will have no shot... it's a tough choice for her.