While the circular firing squad was being assembled to fight over personalities in CD-22, the guy who lost the race for Texas GOP vice chairman was taking broadsides at the folks in charge. He wasn't alone: The former head of Harris County's GOP was even more critical.

Gary Polland, who now writes the Texas Conservative Review and who used to head the Harris County Republicans, says the big mistake by the Party was moving the Tom DeLay ballot case from the state courts — where Democrats first filed it — to the federal courts. His take: "The RPT simply invited the federal government to intervene on a matter of state law. Not only was this a foolish move — it was decidedly not conservative."

Bobby Eberle, who runs a conservative news service called GOPUSA, put the blame for the CD-22 circus on the state party. The Democrats, he writes, [1] might get the seat as a result: "The congressional seat of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay is now in jeopardy thanks in part to a failure in leadership from party officials." He contends they fumbled the ball when they tried to get DeLay off the ballot and replaced with another Republican, that they bungled the legal case that followed that mistake, and that their efforts to get everyone behind a single write-in candidate are futile. Eberle, who lost the vice chairman's race earlier this summer to Robin Armstrong, ended with a call for leadership.

Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, whose name had been promoted as a write-in, doesn't want to play. In a statement, he jumped clear of the whole thing: "I want to make clear that I am neither a write-in candidate nor a prospective one despite the well-intentioned draft movement within the Party."

Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace, who's paid his fees to the state and will thus be a bona fide write-in candidate, wasn't planning to attend the meet-up. He'll be in the hunt whether the straw-pollers like him or not. Tim Turner, a former State Republican Executive Committee member, is a potential candidate, as is Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs.

Other than Wallace, only Don Richardson of Houston has jumped through the hoops to get on the ballot as a write-in. That's important for at least two reasons: Certified write-ins get their votes counted (which is why Alfred E. Neuman isn't president) and their names are displayed in each polling place and in each voting booth.