[Political Junkie Too]

When you say that we disagree on the timing and that a loss now will weaken the candidate, you are really saying that we disagree that someone who steps up to fight now builds "street cred" for later.

You say that they won't build any credibility, that a fight now ruins them for later. I say that stepping up now builds them up for later.

You know what will happen later. They will say that the person came out of nowhere, hasn't built up a history of wanting to lead, hasn't built the network or made personal connections for wanting the job, hasn't gone through the hard knocks, or as Hillary said of Obama in 2008, "hasn't done the necessary spade work."

-PJ

[tennmountainman]

You do make a lot of great points. But running for a leadership position
is quite different than running for public office. A leadership vote is a secret
ballot. One needs time to drum up votes in a leadership vote. The GOPe’s rigged this rushed vote to deny conservatives
time necessary to drum up votes. One can certainly blame conservatives
for not being prepared when the opportunity arose.
Conservatives were certainly unprepared to act quickly.
My first reaction was also disappointment that a true conservative
did not step up.

Then I realized there had to be a reason.
And the reason could be the odds of victory in this leadership fight
are much greater with the coming new session of congress than they are
now.

However, with articles like this coming out, I will be very surprised if
conservatives do not have a knock down brawl for leadership positions
in the coming new congress. And they fact we conservatives are having
These conversations

In this particular fight, conservatives were caught off guard, unorganized
and got beat to the punch.
But only for the monent.