Party hack Gingrich steps in it, then jumps up and down and splashes merrily about:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) late Monday had some choice words for Republicans supporting Conservative Party party candidate Doug Hoffman (N.Y.), accusing them of conducting a “purge” of the GOP.

Many national Republican figures, such as Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) and ex-Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska), have backed Hoffman over GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava in the 23rd district’s special election this year. The district has been long-held by Republicans, but many conservatives have shied away from Scozzafava for her socially liberal positions and the local GOP’s selection process that they say was not transparent.

Gingrich broke the mold and backed Scozzafava, saying her candidacy gave the Republicans the best shot of regaining a congressional majority. The former Speaker faced a push-back from the right after his announcement but he upped the ante on Monday.

“This idea that we’re suddenly going to establish litmus tests and all across the country we’re going to purge the party of anybody who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent; that guarantees Obama’s reelection, that guarantees Pelosi as Speaker-for-life,” he told Fox News last night.

A couple of thoughts here: first, nobody that I know of has said we’re going to “purge the party of anybody who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent.” What people are saying is that they’re no longer going to vote for statists, no matter what letter they have after their names in news reports. Nor are they going to donate money to a party who pays lip service to American ideals and then abandons them once the opportunity arises. Try another straw man, Newt; that one had the stuffing knocked out of it long ago.

Second, I find it amusing that the people who are actually advocating “purges” are not true conservatives who are sick and tired of being used and then spit on by their chosen party, but the whining RINO screechmonkeys who insist that Limbaugh, Palin, Beck, et al are shameful mountebanks who must be denounced repeatedly by all right-thinking people.

By merely stating their intention not to swallow the splooge being slung about by the out-of-touch GOP “mainstream” anymore, conservatarian types aren’t advocating anything like a “purge,” but instead are announcing their intention to vote according to their principles, and the RINOs’ discomfort with such an OUTRAGEOUS! proposition is very damned telling. It’s all just part and parcel of the statist urge, I guess: do what we say OR ELSE. No wonder they’re so comfortable with the Leftists they’re always sucking up to.

Third: another whining threat we constantly hear from them is that conservatives “simply can’t win” in certain parts of the country. Well, who the hell says so? And how the hell would they know if they haven’t tried running any actual honest, straightforward conservatives in any of those places? The only thing we know for sure is that A) if you elect a RINO, you’re going to get bigger and more corrupt government, just ten percent less of it than if you elect their Democrat Socialist partners-in-crime instead, and B) the sense of ennui and hopelessness created by putting forth phony conservative after phony conservative has led to defeat after defeat for their candidates, as the base throws up its collective (not collectivist) hands and stays home on election day. How’s President McCain working out for you so far, anyway?

Taking lessons in how to win elections from these guys is a lot like attending a seminar on how to win the World Series by the management of the Chicago Cubs. Before you guys start lecturing anybody on how to win national elections, maybe you ought to, y’know, win some national elections first. And you’re never going to do that by coming out of the gate with your tail between your legs; acting as if you’re ashamed of the principles that built this nation and made it great, prosperous and powerful; and assuming that those principles can never be upheld and restored because the Left juggernaut is just too much to take on.

There are an awful lot of us out here who are good and damned sick of the shamefaced, hangdog approach too many GOPers take to those principles. There are an awful lot of us who have had quite enough of accommodation with people whose campaign slogans all amount to, “America is the greatest nation in the world; we just want to change everything about it!” There are a great many of us who don’t think American success and strength require any overseas apologies by the people we elect to represent us.

If the Republican Party and its various mouthpieces don’t agree with all that, we’ll find someone who will. You in the GOP are not no way no how entitled to our votes just because of a history you’ve disgraced; leave that to the various slaves and dupes forever trapped on the Democrat Socialist plantation. From here on out you’ll have to earn our votes, instead of assuming they’re yours by default. Otherwise, you’re going to find out just how long a political party can take its electoral base for granted.

Allahpundit, in a particularly blinkered, contentious, and just flat-out wrong post yesterday, said:

One crushing defeat away from total victory, in perpetuity. A question for Beck fans, borrowing a line uttered here by the man himself: What is the endgame? There’s a sense I get from watching Beck that he thinks there’s a supermajority out there willing to return to Founders-style libertarianism if only he and other conservatives hammer the message hard and long enough. I don’t think there is…In a perfect world, Doug Hoffman wins and all the purple districts break for “true conservatives” and all federal entitlements are repealed and the income tax is abolished etc etc etc. Assume hypothetically now that the world isn’t perfect. What is the endgame?

It’s the wrong question; this IS the endgame. Better to concern ourselves with the stakes instead: the United States of America, governed by the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and its future as a free republic. And we ought to be playing with conviction, integrity, and confidence in our shared values, not assuming we’re whipped before we sit down at the table.

Pandering to “moderates” is no way to win anything, because moderates are by definition followers, not leaders. And if GOP weaklings are prepared to concede leadership to the Left in hopes of retaining merely enough power to slow them down a fraction, then the GOP is of no use at all when it comes to shaping the future of this nation, if any. In that case, the endgame has already been played to conclusion — and America lost. Allahpundit may be ready to concede that — and I’m sure things look a lot different to someone living in the very epicenter of Lefty folly, as he does — but I ain’t. And neither is anybody else I know. Captain Ed knows the score:

The 2010 elections will hinge on government interventions in the economy. If the GOP wants to win, they need to find candidates like Rubio, Pat Toomey, Douglas Hoffman, Rob Portman, and others who put the principles of fiscal conservatism and limited government ahead of all other considerations. A nation aghast at the Obama overreach in 2009 needs clear choices, not various shades of Democrat Lite. Rubio has this exactly correct.

And so do you, Ed. Much as I love Allahpundit and have always enjoyed his work, he let his Eeyore tendencies get the best of him here. Take heart, buddy; it ain’t all over just yet. And as I said, if the GOP won’t step up and do what’s necessary to defeat the unworkable scourge of Left progressivism, we’ll find someone who will. Might take a bit longer, and assuredly won’t be easy. But it WILL happen. This may not be America any longer, but there are still plenty of Americans living in it who aren’t going to accept the socialist bit and yoke without a struggle.

This far. No further.