Dede Schozzafava is the former Republican candidate for Congress in New York's 23rd, the candidate ditched by her party who subsequently quit the race and endorsed the Democrat, Bill Owens, who won and will now be the first Democrat to represent the northern tier of the district since 1850.
The Washington Post has several interesting details of the final days of that campaign, including Ms. Schozzafava's husband calling the cops on a particularly pesky Weekly Standard reporter, and that Ms. Schozzafava made her decision to endorse the Democrat while singing in the choir at the First United Methodist Church.
In the last line of the article, Schozzafava identifies herself as a "Lincoln Republican." "There is a lot of us who consider ourselves Republicans, of the Party of Lincoln. If they don't want us with them, we're going to work against them."
I come from a line of Lincoln Republicans on both sides of my family. Lincoln was the anti-slavery candidate in 1860. His vote was very high in the north--75% in Vermont, 63% in Minnesota, 62% in Maine. The further south you went, the more the Lincoln vote diminished, disappearing entirely in the deep south--1% in Kentucky, not even on the ballot in most southern states.
Ms. Scozzafava has learned first-hand that, indeed, the GOP no longer has any use for Lincoln Republicans. As the Republican Party has morphed into the Party of Jefferson Davis, Lincoln Republicans have either become Democrats, which is why the northeast is now a Democratic stronghold, or have found themselves, through default and inertia, supporting candidates whose agenda would be in direct conflict with those of their forebears.
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