New York 23rd Congressional district loser Doug Hoffman now also a famous ex-Olympian

Doug Hoffman will probably not look like this when the count of the absentee ballots is finished in New York's 23rd Congressional District

Doug Hoffman is showing us how capable he is of turning fantasy into reality. First he was the upstart Conservative candidate for Congress who surged at the last minute after an outpouring of national Republican rage to come in 2nd place in the special election for Army Secretary John McHugh’s seat in Congress.

And now, via Dave Weigel at the Washington Independent, we also see that Hoffman believes he will ultimately be crowned the New York 23rd’s Congressman over Democratic Rep. Bill Owens once absentee ballots are counted because it’s like the time he won a gold medal for his Olympic-caliber athletic skills:

Reporters want to know if I think I can still win this race. Remember I was a part of the 1980 Miracle on Ice. I believe in miracles.

via Twitter / Doug Hoffman: Reporters want to know if ….

As Dave points out, Hoffman was not an American ice hockey Olympian; he was a controller, an accountant, for the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics.

But anyways, I can’t wait until the absentee count is finished. Hoffman first caused Dede Scozzafava to flip to endorsing her Democratic rival by bringing all the conservative nasties to the North Country to call her a RINO; then, he lost a reliably red district to the Democrat, Owens; now, his unconceding will give us a Hat Trick of sore loserdom. Way to go Hoffman! Better luck in November 2010!

Of course, given that Owens was a resident of the North Country, and a red-white-and-blue-bleeding American at the time of the 1980 Olympics, you could say that he was as much of a part of the 1980 Miracle on Ice as Hoffman. And because the GOP decided to split its ticket, Rep. Owens is now Congressman and helped provide the 220th vote in favor of health care reform.

I bet if Dede Scozzafava had run unopposed and trounced Owens, she probably would have voted Nay in order to assure her caucus of her Republican credentials. Rep. Joseph Cao may not have been willing to be the 219th vote in that case, and who knows, maybe then the GOP could have rousted another Democrat over to their side of the aisle by saying, “Come on, you don’t want us to paint you as the 218th vote, do you?”

Now *that* would have been a miracle, putting health care reform on ice. But it didn’t happen. And I think that means that Hoffman needs some time in the penalty box.