Mondello lacks wagons to circle

"Another conservative against Mondello," reports Jimmy Vielkind. But Brendan Quinn, on Fred Dicker's Talk 1300 radio show today, said he's not hearing local Republican Party leaders come out against the state chairman, Joe Mondello. Seems to me that shows there's a problem with the party, not with the critics. Nor does this statement from Matt Walter, who now holds Quinn's former job of state party executive director, fill one with confidence. "Chairman Mondello is committed to keeping the state party organization as an independent entity that serves the 62 county Republican organizations across the state while working closely with Republican elected officials at the federal, state and local level." The problem is, there are fewer and fewer Republican elected officials to work with -- none statewide, and only three in Congress from New York. There should have been four, but Jim Tedisco went down in flames, and the state committee bears some responsibility for that disaster and the failure of the campaign to correct course while there was still time.  Maybe Mondello is a scapegoat, but he's also a symbol of the GOP acting as a kind of insiders club to financially benefit the people who run it, rather than a mass party that can compete with the Democrats for power.