And the Palinites win!

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Jay had a good analysis of yesterday's election below. Perhaps the only really significant result was in NY-23 where a Democrat won for the first time in a 140 years.   The Palin/Limbaugh/Beck lunatics managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  But the lunatics won one today.

Cornyn: ‘We Will Not Spend Money in a Contested Primary’

With Republicans grappling with the fallout of an intra-party battle that may have cost them a House seat, the head of the Senate Republican campaign effort is making a pledge that may ease some of the anger being directed at the party establishment.

"We will not spend money in a contested primary," Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told ABC News in a telephone interview today.

"There's no incentive for us to weigh in," said Cornyn, R-Texas. "We have to look at our resources. . . . We're not going to throw money into a [primary] race leading up to the election."

Cornyn said his pledge extends to races for open Senate seats -- not incumbents who may face primaries next year. The NRSC so far has endorsed candidates in four open Senate seats -- Florida, Missouri, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.

Cornyn's commitment is most immediately relevant in Florida, where the NRSC's candidate, Gov. Charlie Crist, is facing an aggressive challenge on his right from state House Speaker Marco Rubio.

That's right - the Republican establishment has surrendered to the Palinites.  Deeper into the wilderness anyone?  Andrew Sullivan:

John Cornyn's statement that the NRSC will not fund its own candidates in disputed primaries seems to me to be a surrender to the base activists. What it means is that the same forces that purged Scozzafava will have free rein to purge others. They are already interpreting a Democratic victory in a super-safe red-state seat as a win for ... conservatives. And the threat of third party candidates against the GOP across the country has obviously spooked the national party leadership.

But that leaves an obvious question: what about Rubio-Crist?

Crist is vulnerable for being gay in the first place, although his sexual orientation is not as abhorrent as his support for the stimulus package and actually - gasp - appearing with a newly elected president of the United States who carried Florida. But the NRSC has already endorsed Crist and the Club for Growth purists are itching to back Rubio, who has the support of the netroots and the Beck-Palin insurgency. So the apparent surrender may have an inconvenient hangover from the past. And if Crist is taken down by Rubio, then the last remnants of non-movement conservatism will be fast evaporating from the GOP.

Maybe this will indeed be the real long-term consequence of last night: the acceleration of the GOP toward the Christianist right, and a platform of real counter-revolution against the post New Deal Settlement. I do find it remarkable that a Republican in New York State who is actually on the right of her own delegation is nonetheless a "socialist" and a "radical leftist" in the eyes of the base.

It's back to the 1940s we go!

Gay or not Crist is a shoe in - Rubio, not so much.  Palin and Beck may turn out to be the Democrat's best asset.