The Republican candidate who was running for NY-23, Scozzafav, dropped out of the race today. All the way around; this is not a good sign for either the Republican party or the conservatives. While the Democratic party has often aired it's dirty laundry in public, and rarely hid infighting, in the end a consensus was build, and the party moved forward. But the Republicans are not infighting. What we are witnessing is disintegration.

The extremists have taken the title of conservatism and pushed out those who are truly conservative. In the process, they have divided the Republican party. The demands of lock-step unity the party pursued during the first 5 and a half years of the Bush presidency prevented the honest airing of policy differences and prevented compromise, creating a buildup of toxic animosity and vitriol.

This is a party that lost any ability to look within itself and see its mistakes and to accept the failures of their ideology. Instead, they cling harder to what they believed is the only way and now walk down a political blind alley. As such, they are not likely to adjust their stance to the prevailing political will of the people.

Instead of seeing politics as simple leadership, they have developed a mindset of their party as a way of life. And at this time in history, they see their way of life as needing to eradicate liberalism. Unfortunately, in their desire to destroy liberalism they have taken to destroying themselves.