Once more with feeling. Mr. Hoffmann is an enrolled Republican. Ten county chairmen in the North Country selected Mrs. Scozzafava as a candidate by a weighted vote among themselves per the Election Law of New York. There was no petition process or primary. The North Country is not the east side of Manhattan or Westchester. Common-and-garden Republicans can and do poll well there. The county chairmen have been playing an obscure insider game and expected (as New York pols do) that the electorate would suck it up (as that electorate generally does if you do not poison the water table or forthrightly and transparently raise their property taxes). These ten individuals cannot legitimately complain if their own committeemen flip them the bird, much less if everyone else does.

This is not a political question – it is a question of culture. Are conservatives and traditionalists strong and principled enough to rout the liars or will we be left with the choice of speedy progressives and not-so-fast progressives again?

Goldwater, Reagan, Paul and Hoffman (and Palin) are examples of the people choosing principles over political-pragmatism. You can either change the Republican party or migrate to another. Perhaps the Conservative Party will grow and the Republican party die, or publically merge with the Democrats, rather than keep up the farce that they are two different parties. In fact, the Republicans and the Democrats are just slightly different factions of the same oligarchy.