Ouch.

New York Republicans got a rock in their trick-or-treat bags over the Halloween weekend, as Dede Scozzafava ripped off her million-dollar Republican mask and revealed herself to be a Democrat. It was never a very good disguise, but every previous attempt to peer beneath it was punished with stern lectures from Newt Gingrich and the rest of the party establishment. The bags of contributor money Republicans handed to the Scozzafava campaign would have been more usefully spent hiring detectives to trail ACORN operatives, and keep Democrat voter fraud down to manageable levels.

The Scozzafava campaign is the latest dreadful mistake from a party establishment enchanted by the mirage of the perfect moderate candidate. For Republican voters, it seems like every winter is the winter of their discontent. Many of the GOP’s boneheaded mistakes come from exactly the same source as the Democrats’ boneheaded mistakes: the tendency to believe the media action line about themselves. This produces arrogance in the Democrats, while the Republicans are like awkward, lovestruck teenagers – terrified the slightest bit of confident self-expression will blow their chances with the cute moderate in the pink sweater seated beside them in homeroom class. They suffer beneath the same irony that crushes every awkward teenager, since confident self-expression is exactly what is needed to connect with the object of their affections… assuming they’re not obsessing over someone they never had a chance with anyway.