Fort Sumter falls. Again.

Up in the New York 23rd District Congressional race, the Republican candidate for a seat the party has held since the 1870s has struck her tent and released her supporters.

Dede Scozzafava says she's got too little money and too litle time to make up the distance between her campaign and those of the Democratic candidate and carpetbagger Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman.

Anaconda's already busy dismantling the party, noting:

Just weeks ago, Scozzafava was the favorite to win the race, but then Hoffman’s candidacy took off after receiving the endorsement of GOP heavyweights like Fred and Jeri Thompson and Sarah Palin.

As Anaconda has often noted, the only really heavyweight thing about Jeri Thompson is her killer rack. After drifting for a decade with a deadbeat boyfriend and a raft of unpaid tickets, she and the First Napper met in a Kroger supermarket line. She had a major influence on her elderly husband's soporific presidential campaign as it napped its way into oblivion, and, other than having a Fox News sinecure, pretty much just takes up space.

And that's what makes a GOP heavyweight these days.

What'll be interesting, in the fallout from Tuesday's vote, will be the reactions of the GOP consultant/bloggers who drive much of the Internet debate in South Carolina.

The lines are already being drawn between Senator Jim DeMint, who abandoned his own party to endorse Hoffman in New York, and Senator Lindsey Graham, who says the GOP will wither away and die being the party of angry white Southern men.

For centrists, who want rational parties to choose from, either alternative seems equally desirable.