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So Democrats finally got a Republican to sign on to their health care bill that will saddle Americans taxpayers with more than $2.8 trillion in debt over the next 20 years. Don't take my word for it. That's the estimate of the Congressional Budget Office, which also estimates that the plan will add $1.8 trillion in new taxes over the next 20 years, as well as require $1.9 trillion to be pulled from Medicare and other programs.

With a political class in Washington that has set new highs for government spending and regulation, government debt, and a weak dollar that is now increasingly dependent on our "friends" the Chinese, should we be surprised that conservatives are looking for better options than the Republicans in Name Only who are helping dig our nation into what may be the worst period for our economy in more than a half century?

The best example of this is up in the special election to fill the House seat vacated by moderate Republican Rep. John McHugh. Republican Party bosses in upstate New York and the National Republican Congressional Committee may have thought it a good idea to put liberal state Rep. Dede Scozzafava on the Republican line. But as Politico reports, conservatives -- and even many Republicans -- aren't eating that dog food. A number of us are invested in the campaign of Doug Hoffman, who is challenging both the Republican and the Democrat in this race, because he represents something lacking in Washington right now: common sense when it comes to fiscal issues and the role of government in our daily lives. The fact that Republican Party leaders in NY-23 and the NRCC ignored just about everything that has taken place over the past six months -- the fight over the Obama stimulus package, the tea party rallies, the health care debate -- and put Scozzafava on the ballot, indicates that we need more, not less, common sense and conservative values in the Republican Party.

Hoffman represents conservatives' best chance to send a national message to the Republican Party that they are a force to be reckoned with, and that Hoffman appears to have the energy from the grassroots to pull off a win and help lay the groundwork for a successful 2010 election cycle. As one Hoffman supporter told me yesterday, "The feeling of momentum is palpable. The race is between Doug and the Democrat...we hope Dede won't be a spoiler for conservatives in this race."