If you are a moderate Republican, this episode has to concern you: GOP Moderate, Pressed by the Right, Abandons Race (the flip side of Kidd's ploy?)

I first did my first post on the head-vs.-heart dynamic in this 10-26-09 post entitled "Ideology trumps party for Palin. Her allegiance is to her conservative principles rather than the party's edicts. -- The head-vs.-heart dynamic."

That post also provides the background for this post on the special New York congressional election.

The post concluded by noting that the head-vs.-heart dynamic is already shaping up in a higher-profile race in Florida's U.S. Senate primary between Gov. Charlie Crist and former state House speaker Marco Rubio.

At issue is the debate between the "head" choice (the party's candidate) and the "heart" choice (the candidate whose belief system hews closer to core conservative principles).

In the New York contest outsiders Sarah Palin, former senators Rick Santorum (Pa.) and Fred Thompson (Tenn.) and former House majority leader Dick Armey (Tex.) involved themselves in an unprecedented way in the local race by focusing national attention on their support of the heart choice, in effect, deciding that the head choice did not bleed red enough.

Closer to home, the Demcrocratic Party of Georgia has jumped into a local, nonpartisan race, and decreed that Mary Norwood, the apparent frontrunner in the race to replace Shirtley Franklin as mayor Atlanta, does not bleed blue enough. (If one wants to press the anology and push it to the edge, you could say Kidd tried to make anyone but Norwood be the head candidate versus the heart candidate according to the polls.)

As noted below and by the caption of this post, the intervention by the GOP's right wing worked in New York, and regardless, it had nothing to lose.

I predict Kidd's attempt to be a colossal and embarassing failure, although I do not see it having much negative impact on the votes received by the other two candidates. But as far as our party goes, much was risked and the damage could be significant and difficult to repair.

From The New York Times:

A moderate Republican whose candidacy for an upstate New York Congressional seat had set off a storm of national conservative opposition, abruptly withdrew on Saturday, emboldening the right at a time when the Republican Party is enmeshed in a debate over how to rebuild itself.

Party leaders — including [the Republican National Committee national chairman Michael] Steele and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker — had argued that local parties should be permitted to pick candidates that most closely mirror the sentiments of the district, even if those candidates vary from Republican orthodoxy on some issues.

A primary is unfolding in Florida, where Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for the Senate, is facing a challenge from a conservative, Marco Rubio, the former Florida House speaker. Mr. Crist has come under fire from conservatives for, among other things, supporting Mr. Obama on his economic stimulus package.
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Frank Rich writes in The New York Times:

The governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia were once billed as the marquee events of Election Day 2009 — a referendum on the Obama presidency and a possible Republican “comeback.” But preposterous as it sounds, the real action migrated to New York’s 23rd, a rural Congressional district abutting Canada. That this pastoral setting could become a G.O.P. killing field, attracting an all-star cast of combatants led by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, William Kristol and Newt Gingrich, is a premise out of a Depression-era screwball comedy.
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And from The Washington Post:

The moderate Republican nominee for a vacant U.S. House seat here unexpectedly withdrew from the race Saturday, bowing to a revolt led by conservative activists that badly split the national GOP leadership and is likely to influence the shape of the party heading into next year's midterm elections.

The sudden turn of events in this Upstate New York district sends a signal to Republican candidates across the country that the populist forces are prepared to exercise their muscle against GOP candidates they regard as insufficiently conservative.

Already, conservative activists have zeroed in on the 2010 race for Florida's open Senate seat, in which the party campaign committee has endorsed moderate Gov. Charlie Crist but the more conservative Marco Rubio, a former state House speaker, is mounting a strong challenge.

"If I were Charlie Crist in Florida, what's happening in New York 23 would make me extremely nervous," GOP strategist Todd Harris said. "A lot of the establishment Republicans underestimated the grass-roots anger across the country about spending and the expansion of the federal government. The anger is boiling over now, but a lot of the seeds of discontent were planted over the last five to six years."