(h/t: NewsBusters)

Note to Newt Gingrich and the NRCC: This is what a quick fade into irrelevance feels like, enjoy.

Showing just how out of touch he is, Gingrich manages to make the case for the other side while trying to shore up his untenable position.

Gingrich, for his part, insisted in an e-mail to the Fix that the special election was not — and should not be interpreted as — a conservative litmus test, and explained that his endorsement of Scozzafava was entirely about respecting local party leaders.

There is no reason for any conservative/libertarian Republican to respect party leaders at any level these days. That’s the point we’re all trying to get through to you, Mr. Speaker.

Doug Hoffman isn’t really a third party candidate. He’s the Republican who would be on the ballot if there were any GOP “party leaders” left who pulled their heads out long enough to see things for what they are.

The old-school GOP elite are so pathetic now that the man who engineered the great victory in 1994 is reduced to badgering with a political columnist so he can save face after endorsing a candidate who would be left-of-mainstream if she was running as a Democrat.

Even if Hoffman doesn’t prevail in the general election, this noise being made from the grassroots Right in the past couple of weeks should be noticed by even the most hard of hearing nonagenarian in the GOP hierarchy.

On another note, the timidity displayed by the silence of Mitt Romney and Chuckles Huckabee just adds to the list of reasons why people need to stop talking about them as serious, viable candidates in 2012.

Just sayin’.