Scozzafava: RINOs of the world, unite!

That’s the motto of David Frum’s website, if I’m not mistaken.

At her desk, with a fuzzy elephant face down on a bookshelf behind her, she recalled the exhausting end days of her campaign. Violet semicircles hung below her teary eyes as she recounted how Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and other conservative leaders excoriated her for less-than-orthodox positions on gay rights, abortion and organized labor. Her nose reddened as she recalled her abrupt exit from the special election to replace John M. McHugh, whom President Obama had appointed as secretary of the Army earlier in the year…

Scozzafava, who was stripped of her Republican leadership position in the New York State Assembly on Monday, says she has no regrets and even leaves open the possibility of running for the seat again as a Republican. She sees herself as a champion of local expertise over ideological purity.

“How can Sarah Palin come out and endorse someone who can’t answer some basic questions,” [Insert leftist snickering here. -- ed.] Scozzafava asked. “Do these people even know who they are endorsing?”

Those conservative forces now descend on Florida, where former House speaker Marco Rubio, who on Monday received the endorsement of the Club for Growth, might shove aside centrist Gov. Charlie Crist, who was once on John McCain’s short list for running mate. And Scozzafava has a warning.

“There is a lot of us who consider ourselves Republicans, of the Party of Lincoln,” she said, her face now flush. “If they don’t want us with them, we’re going to work against them.”

That was enough to drive even the normally mild-mannered Patterico to an indignant fisking. Question: Who, precisely, does she think is willing and eager to “work” with her inside the GOP to forge the new pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, pro-union Lincoln coalition? She’s the kiss of death. If she endorsed Crist tomorrow, it’d probably peel away five percent of the conservatives who’ve stuck with him thus far. What she should do is strike while the iron is hot and cash in to whatever extent she can with leftists eager to use her as a martyr to demagogue the right. Do the whole MSNBC sob-story media tour — Shuster, Olby, Maddow — then try to wrangle a book deal about how the “conservative freak show” or whatever silenced your dissent. Be sure to omit the part where you took $900,000 of the party’s money before endorsing the Democrat. Or set yourself up as the anti-Palin, willing and able to comment on her alleged “extremism” whenever the media needs you to. One could live comfortably that way, I’d imagine.

Speaking of influential RINOs, here’s the obligatory link to PPP’s poll of Maine Republicans confirming that they pretty much hate Olympia Snowe. Her overall approval rating is fine — 51/36 — but among GOPers she’s 40/46, which makes me think it won’t be long before she has a Specter-esque “awakening.”

Blowback