Frederick Tweets on Being Ousted: "OMGZ guys, WTF was that?! >:-( :*-( "

No more Twittering past the graveyard, I suppose. Jeff Frederick is out. So saith the GOP central committee earlier today by a vote of 57-18:

Members of the Republican Party of Virginia’s central committee have voted to remove state party chairman Jeffrey M. Frederick. The unofficial tally was 57-18 with one abstention.

The first two hours of the meeting were marked by presentations from Frederick’s opponents and by two lawyers hired to defend the 33-year-old House of Delegates member from Prince William County. Frederick did not speak on his own behalf.

That sound you hear is the collective sigh of relief from the handful of moderates-in-exile scattered throughout the state GOP. They may finally be poised to retake their party and stage a resurgence. But wait! The plot thickens:

Earlier in the morning before the meeting began,  about 50 Frederick supporters gathered outside the hotel, held signs and chanted “elected, not selected,“ a reference to the state party convention that elected him to the post last year.

...

Frederick has vowed that if he loses his job today, he will fight his ouster by running again for the job when the full party convenes for its state convention at the end of May.

That other sound you hear is the Jeffophiles forming a mob with torches and pitchforks. 

There's a good take on this over at Fake Virginia: in a nutshell, Jeff's ouster will touch off an even larger civil war within the Republican Party and deliver a big advantage to the Democrats in November--Bob McDonnell came out against Jeff Frederick, so the hardcore loyalists may stay home. Unless, of course, McAuliffe gets the nomination, which would force the disaffected Republicans to vote for McDonnell. I could definitely see something like that unfolding, especially because Frederick's refusal to concede certainly won't help reconciliation. But I do think it depends on who the GOP elects as their new leader at the convention in May. If they put away the Frederick faction, choose someone on this side of sanity, and take a more moderate approach, I think Democrats might end up losing sleep over this.

I personally want the Republicans to be as big of a threat as possible, and here's why. While Jeff Frederick was running the party into the ground, a few state Democrats have begun the same toxic infighting that has cost them elections in the past. One manifestation of this was the recent blowup at Blue Commonwealth. The minute a party loses its external threat, it has no more incentive to stay united. Right now Democrats' biggest weakness is disunity--we have multiple candidates for two of the three up-ballot offices while the GOP already has much of their nomination work taken care of. The last thing I want is for our 2008 gains to be wiped away by redistricting because we were mad at each other.