For political analysts, the lesson in Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman’s loss in November in a special congressional election in New York is obvious: The right overreached. After pressuring Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava out of the race with charges that she was too liberal, conservative activists watched New York’s 23rd District go to a Democrat for the first time in more than a century. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had endorsed Scozzafava and warned Republicans not to “purge the party of anybody who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent,” appeared to be vindicated.

And yet many conservative activists are encouraged by the outcome of the race, which saw Hoffman take 46 percent of the vote. “The lesson of New York 23 is that if the Republican Party nominates people who are Republicans in name only, they are going to meet conservative opposition,” says Tom Minnery, senior vice president of Focus on the Family Action, a conservative evangelical group. “If Scozzafava had never been nominated, the Republicans would have won.” Even Gingrich has renounced Scozzafava, calling her nomination a mistake.

With an endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and support from Family Research Council Action and Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, conservative Christians were among Hoffman’s most active backers, rejecting Scozzofava over her support for abortion rights and gay marriage. Energized in part by their experience in New York, conservative faith-based activists are now poised to support challengers over establishment Republicans in perhaps a dozen or more GOP primaries next year, in races stretching from Florida to California. “You’re going to see the largest number of competitive Republican primaries since the 1992-to-1994 period,” says Reed, the former Christian Coalition chief. “It’s a sign of a healthy movement.”

But some GOP leaders worry that the growing number of contests between party-backed figures and conservative challengers will create fissures at a time when Republicans are trying to unify and rebuild. That, they fear, could pave the way for more Democratic wins. Last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee called a meeting with activists on the right, including religious conservatives, to discuss the lessons of New York 23. “Any time you have a loss like we did in 2008, there’s a debate about how the party should go forward,” says David Winston, the pollster for congressional Republicans. “But New York 23 showed that that debate could be poisonous.”

The ongoing tensions are on clearest display in Florida, where Gov. Charlie Crist is facing the more conservative Marco Rubio, a former Florida House speaker, in the primary for an open U.S. Senate seat. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, has endorsed Crist, while Rubio is pitching himself as the grass roots’ choice.

“The conservatives are the ones being purged from the party,” says Rubio, who claims the national senatorial committee has scared off potential donors, though the group denies it.

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