All of the returns from all of the important elections are in and the results - in my humble opinion - are astounding when you parse  the various contests individually and collectively. Overall, they hit just as I predicted they would - like a thunderclap - and the both the Drive-Bys and the Democrats reacted to it in precisely the fashion Rush Limbaugh predicted they would.

As you all know by now, the Republican Party captured the governor’s mansion in both New Jersey and Virginia. They also lost an upstate New York Congressional seat in the defeat of Doug Hoffman, who ran on the Conservative Party ticket.

Let’s start with District 23 in upstate New York and this time we’ll be mindful of some very pertinent facts that bear mentioning if the analysis is to make any sense.

The election was not a regular one but a special one, conducted to fill a seat recently vacated by moderate Republican Bob McHugh, who resigned to become Secretary of the Army in the Obama administration. Consequently, no primary was held and the candidate was chosen basically by the Republican committee, who passed over Doug Hoffman and gave its imprimatur to DeDe Scozzafava who - though referred to ad nauseum as a “moderate” Republican - is actually the purest living embodiment of the term “Republican In Name Only”  who cleaves to positions so far to the left she made her Democrat opponent, Bill Owens, looked like a moderate Republican. Even the DailyKos endorsed her.

For his part, Hoffman refused to let this outrage to the Republican brand go unchallenged and he approached the Conservative Party, who immediately made him their candidate. In the course of the campaign - during which time Scozzafava received support and close to a million dollars from the state GOP and the RNCC along with the endorsement of Newt Gingrich - Hoffman repeatedly pointed out Scozzafava’s actual record in office, her consistent support of far-left agenda items and the endorsement she received from an organization affiliated with ACORN. He also received the endorsement of Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and radio talker Mark Levin, after which a flood of conservative Republicans rushed forward to declare their support for him.

All of this began to take its toll and Scozzafava’s poll numbers began to drop even as Hoffman’s began to rise. The decline became precipitous; she dropped out of the race on October 31 and proceeded to endorse Democrat Bill Owens on November 1.

On November 3 voters in the 23rd District went to the polls and discovered a rather remarkable array of candidates for Congress in the following order:

There is nothing wrong with your eyes. The only two candidates actually IN the race were Hoffman and Owens and yet the Bride of Judas appears on the ballot twice, as does Owens. Behold the downside of a system where multiple parties have easy access to the ballot line up and the ability to provide a single candidate with multiple nominations.

That evening the results were in and today are official:

Interesting, no? But for the 7,315 votes that went to the Bride of Judas, Hoffman would have won the election, beating Owens 51% to 49%. As it is, Hoffman lost by 4%.

Yesterday I predicted that Hoffman would garner 53%, Owens 40% and Scozzafava 7%.

What went wrong? All sorts of analyses are being offered. For starters, ignore anything you hear from the Drive-Bys or the Democrats and think carefully about anything you hear even from Republicans.

Some folks argue that Hoffman’s conservatism was rejected, thereby vindicating the need for a more moderate Republican candidate. If this were the case, Hoffman would have remained at the 20% polling level throughout the campaign - instead, his numbers skyrocketed until he was leading Owens by a single percentage point by the end of October.

Others blame the carbetbagger effect: Owens does not live in the 23rd District, but just outside of it. However, at one time Owens did live in the 23rd District. It wasn’t Owens who moved away, but the district when it the boundary lines were recently redrawn.

The real reasons Hoffman lost lie in the following:

1. There was no primary and the party machine nominated a horrible candidate.

2. The state GOP and RNCC fully supported Scozzafava, gave her campaign $900,000 and even attacked her Conservative opponent early in the campaign. Hoffman is not a terribly charismatic person and has no political experience. His funds were limited and his campaign did not pick up any real momentum until the last two weeks of October. By then, much of the opportunity to garner support had been lost.

3. After dropping out of the race, Scozzafava endorsed Owens and it is entirely likely less attentive Republicans and Independents simply followed her endorsement.

4. The ballot line up was a clusterfark. Scozzafava’s name appeared twice on the ballot and she wasn’t even in the race. Owens name likewise appeared twice. Hoffman’s name was buried in the middle.

5. Most of Scozzafava’s votes probably came from Republicans who simply didn’t know any better and reflexively pulled the lever next to the name with the (R) after it, in much the same fashion that clueless senior citizens continue to vote Democrat because they labor under the delusion that the party of Barack Obama is still the party of FDR.

Is Hoffman’s loss a blow for Movement Conservatives? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that his victory would have been icing on the cake of victories in New Jersey and Virginia; no for the simple reason that Hoffman came within 4 points of defeating Owens and did so against some pretty heavy odds in a very short period of time.

The fact that the margin Hoffman’s loss wasn’t much larger than it should have been according to the prevailing wisdom under such circumstances tells us the conservative approach was the correct one and likely would have prevailed had it been the approach from the beginning.

The teachable moment here belongs to the Republican Party because Hoffman’s loss is due and owing to their monumental ineptitude. If they have  brains they will realize that while Hoffman’s loss is ultimately a loss for the Republican Party (in Congress he would have caucused with the Republicans), Owens’ victory is, indirectly, a gain for the Republican Party in that it spared them the ignominy of sending to Congress a Representative would consistently vote with the Democrats.

The Bride of Judas stabbed the state GOP in the back and now they will have to pull out the knife themselves, sew up the wound and resolve to learn a life-saving lesson from this debacle.