The Republicans could be on the verge of a big day today.  They are poised to sweep all the major races in Virginia and pick up double-digit seats in the state legislature.  Doug Hoffman is looking strong in NY-23, and the New Jersey’s governor race is still up in the air.  Yet in a sense the party doesn’t deserve such a successful outcome.  As Jay Anderson details, the national GOP continues to back so-called moderates that wind up betraying the party in the end, and he wonders if they will ever learn their lesson.

Jeffords, Chafee, Specter, Scozzafava

See a pattern here? Yeah, me, too.

Each of these people received significant amounts of campaign dollars and on-the-ground assistance from the national Republican party during their last election campaigns – sometimes even in Republican primary fights against more conservative GOP challengers – only to gladly take the money and then run away from the party and collude with the Democrats when things didn’t go their way.

I don’t really blame them. Like the proverbial scorpion who stung the frog, it’s just in their nature. Liberals acting like liberals. No, I blame the frogs in the Republican Party establishment who continue to make the same miscalculation over and over and over again and never learn from their mistakes when it comes to commiting significant party resources (not to mention party credibility) on behalf of allegedly more “electable” liberals against more solidly conservative opposition.

Meanwhile, at Hot Air the always insightful Doctor Zero also has a great post on the matter.

Too much of the Republicans’ “Stupid Party” strategy is based on the mechanics of getting people with little elephants on their campaign signs elected. They view the election as the conclusion of a contest, when in fact it’s only the beginning. A successful Republican Party doesn’t have to be ideologically rigid, but it should insist on candidates who possess an intellectual foundation of conservative theory, and the ability to explain it at least as well as the thousands of people posting comments on conservative blogs.

Republican voters would be well-advised to ignore the people who engineered the Scozzafava debacle, and listen for the sound of Sarah Palin’s monster truck instead. America needs conservatives more than it needs Republicans.  Both the party, and the country, benefit when they are one and the same.  Next Halloween, just to be on the safe side, we should test the blood of every “moderate” Republican with a hot wire and a petri dish, just to make sure we don’t have another DIABLO on our hands.

Straw men arguments about ideological purity will continue to be advanced by those with an interest in continuing to derail the conservative movement coughDavidFrumcough.  But again, this isn’t about ideological purity, it’s about advancing strong candidates that bear at least some semblance to being actual Republicans.  It’s about not needlessly tacking to the center in states where good conservative candidates are available – like in Florida with Marco Rubio.

Will the national party establishment pull their heads from their rear ends after tonight?  Hey, if the director of a Planned Parenthood facility can have a change of heart, anything is possible.