Gingrich and Steele are “party men” as much or more than they are “Country Club” Republicans: Gingrich by inclination and history, and Steele by his job description, see themselves as obligated to protect the interests of the party – which includes letting local parties handle (and sometimes mishandle) things according to their own lights and laws, and also means sticking by candidates once recruited and nominated.

But where do the principles espoused in the official party platform come in here? Is it all just so much worthless posturing, or do we have the right – nay, duty to expect our elected representatives to espouse their own stinking party platforms?

They were who they were – custodians of a beaten down party looking for the replacement for a squishy office-holder. They made a bad call, as they were almost destined to – and the rest is history.

I wish I could remain so sanguine. I come from a state with less than half the population of any of the individual borroughs of New York City. By rights, I know that the NY-23 debacle shouldn’t tick me off so much, but it does, and it does tick me off precisely because I see it differently: When Newt made his “collision with destiny,” as so many people on our side seem to view this, he was called out. Then he doubled down and told us why we were all wrong to not embrace Scozzafava. Then he spent over 900 grand on a non-entity who ended up literally endorsing the opposing party’s candidate. What did I miss here?

Newt didn’t put his trust in the local party leaders. Okay, so maybe he did, but if it would have stopped there, I don’t think there would have been such a backlash. He committed the sin of putting party before principle. How do I know he did that? Cause he said as much. It’s not an unforgivable sin, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s one that the Republican Party will have to show some repentance for before they get a single dime of my money.

And for what it’s worth, I consider myself a diehard conservative — even though I am a registered Independent, and have been since 2002.

Wow! That about says it all.

Not “3000 miles from D.C.”. Not “3000 miles from NYC”. Not even “3000 miles from nowhere”.

Guess what, schmuck? YOU don’t vote for Representatives in NY 23d. Or PA 5th. Or OH 17th. Or WY 1. Or TX 13.

The Green Room was the only part of HotAir that I still took seriously. Now even this portion is home to useless psuedo-conservative neo-statists.

Here’s a little test to see if you, too, are a schmuck like CK (short for Calvin Klein, fruitcake?):
Who do you vote for?
1. A Republican who is not a Conservative; or
2. A Conservative who is not a Republican?

This is the only situation that MacLeod’s whole “argument” is relevant to.

If a candidate is both a conservative and a republican – you vote for him.

If a candidate is neither a conservative nor a republican – you vote against him.

So either CK is suggesting that YOU should vote for a Non-Conservative Republican in YOUR district (3000 miles away from HIM and therefore n insignificant backwater filled with mouth-breathing cretins and slack-jawed halfwits) simply because there is an R after his name OR he’s just wasted his, your, and my time with a meaningless NON-argument that has no point or relevance.

Comments have been closed on this post but the discussion continues here.

Gingrich and Steele are “party men” as much or more than they are “Country Club” Republicans: Gingrich by inclination and history, and Steele by his job description, see themselves as obligated to protect the interests of the party – which includes letting local parties handle (and sometimes mishandle) things according to their own lights and laws, and also means sticking by candidates once recruited and nominated.

I was on the other side of Gingrich on this one, but dumping on him and Steele’s a bit unfair. As I suggested under Dr Zero’s post today on the same subject, NY-23 was a come as you are party. Another way of putting it, is that the ground was shifting beneath everyone’s feet at the time the locals – pols from a squishy Northeast party organization – settled on the Scozz by plurality committee vote. They were who they were – custodians of a beaten down party looking for the replacement for a squishy office-holder. They made a bad call, as they were almost destined to – and the rest is history.

For the foreseeable future and on this side of the Apocalypse, the electoral action will remain in the R party of Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell – and Michael Steele and John Boehner and even Newt Gingrich – not in the fantasy 3rd Party of Glenn Beck’s musings or in the bloody shambles after a conservative night of the long knives.

This is a shining example of why primary politics is so important to our two-party system. If there were a primary this time out, Steele and Gingrich would not have been able to louse this thing up as badly as they did.

This wasn’t a three-party contest. It was a special election throughout which the country-club republicans showed their true colors.

I think the unintended benefit of Hoffman’s loss is that it removes a lot of the fuel from the 3rd party fire that was starting.

Hopefully the loss will cause conservatives to shift their focus towards taking the GOP over from within, similar to how the progressives did it to the Dems. Ruthless financial pressure on the establishment during the primary process, but no real talk of leaving the party.