Now, 15 months later, I’m only just realizing how lucky I was. I got to work with a first-rate team of reporters like Mike Lillis, Daphne Eviatar, Rachel Hartman, and Mary Kane — our new editor, replacing Laura after she went to dominate the future-of-media beat at Nieman Lab. I was given absolute freedom to cover the conservative movement at its most exciting moment in at least a generation. I got to travel to Kentucky, Missouri, New York and Massachusetts, to watch this moment unfold. And I got to represent my work and our site on NPR and MSNBC, adding — I hope — some context and some wisdom to a topic that is too often mocked and derided.

This is my last day at TWI. On Tuesday, I’ll be picking up this story where it left off for my new blog at The Washington Post. I’m grateful beyond words for everyone here who made me a better reporter, everyone out there who read my stuff, and — not least — the sources who trusted me as I developed this beat.

Keep reading TWI. I’m proud of what we’ve put together here. And come Tuesday, I’ll be another avid reader of this site. One thing we had in common, as reporters and editors, was that we were less interested in the trappings and rewards of D.C. and more interested in asking ourselves what our journalism was supposed to do. I’m eager to see what TWI’s team, with that attitude, comes up with next.

When Crist arrived, Giuliani made his appeal–and was thrilled with the reply.

“I’d like to support you,” Crist said.

… Giuliani’s team so valued their new prize that they proceeded to build their entire fall strategy around it.

Then, in October, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had a one-on-one meeting with Crist, convincing him that Giuliani couldn’t win.

A few weeks later, in early November, the Giuliani people got the word from Florida that Crist’s endorsement was being suspended until further notice. Giuliani tried to reach Crist, but he was out of the country, on a Latin American trade mission — having taken Giuliani’s nomination strategy with him.

Now, Crist is sagging in the polls in his Senate run. Giuliani gets to stick the knife in him.

Scozzafava told WRVO public radio she’s begun assembling notes.

“I have been kind of putting pieces together, yes, just, I think, more so for me, just to kind of go back and recall different moments, and I had jotted down certain occasions and I’ve got a whole calendar of events, and I’m kind of thinking about it again,” said Scozzafava.

The news is being sent around by still-angry supporters of Doug Hoffman, the Conservative candidate taking another crack at the race this year.

Petri said Republicans don’t have to repeal the health care plan. They could effectively quash it by refusing to fund the initiatives as each one comes before Congress for authorization.

“The president can’t spend money unless it’s appropriated by the Congress,” he said.

As Donny Shaw pointed out when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) argued for this strategy, “refusing to fund” is harder than it sounds — the president can veto appropriations bills just as easily as he can veto a “repeal” bill. And teeing up entitlement cuts for a Democratic president to veto — well, that’s a fight Democrats would enjoy.

He… said the subsidies come with conditions, such as when he was required to spend thousands of dollars building an earthen terrace to control erosion. And without the money, he said, American farmers couldn’t compete with countries that subsidize fuel and fertilizer more generously than the United States.

“People are quick to say with their mouth full, ‘Well, the American farmer is on the dole,’ ” Fincher said. “But a loaf of bread is two bucks when it could be 10 bucks. I know what it is with the government in my business. We would be all for not having government in our business, but we need a fair system.”

The sort of argument a liberal might make, if we’re being honest.

A group that calls itself the Guardians of the free Republics wants to “restore America” by peacefully dismantling parts of the government, according to its Web site.

As of Wednesday, more than 30 governors had received letters saying if they don’t leave office within three days they will be removed, according to an internal intelligence note by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The note was obtained by The Associated Press.

According to the Guardians’ website, they want to achieve their goals “BEHIND THE SCENES, lawfully, peacefully, without violence and without risking civil war.” But state governments aren’t chancing it.

Week two begins with chronicles of “nativist violence” that characterizes much of American history, as well as the inevitable contention that arguments for restricting immigration were solely a product of racist ideology… Weeks Four and Five helpfully inform us that  “the United States has interfered in Latin American politics in ways that perpetuate oppression and encourage violence.” You’ve got the reconquista coming, gringo.

The review is at the website of Young People for Western Civilization — hence the pro-Barletta tone.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele (ZUMA)

The “suggested amount” portion of the donation form is crossed out. There isn’t a box to check for no donation, so the would-be donor has simply drawn and filled in a new bubble and scrawled “NO.”

“What the hell happened in NY District 23?” writes the anonymous donor to an unrewarded Republican National Committee. “You guys supporting Dede Scozzafava?”

[GOP1] The form is one of many collected by blogger, columnist and TV pundit Michelle Malkin since the RNC chipped in for the doomed congressional campaign of Scozzafava, a moderate Republican who eventually withdrew from a November 2009 special election and helped Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.) squeak past Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. In the wake of Monday’s Daily Caller story on the RNC’s lavish spending, including a $1,923 check to the Voyeur West Hollywood nightclub — an embarrassment to RNC Chairman Michael Steele for which the offender, Allison Meyers, was fired, and her upcoming events postponed — Malkin put up another batch of defiled RNC donation forms, with graffiti like “Fire Steele. Hire Cheney. (Dick or Liz.) Then Get Back to Me.”

The Voyeur story dogged the RNC all week, especially after the committee pointed to outsized Democratic National Committee expenses as a distraction (giving the DNC an opportunity to take another whack at the juicier RNC tale) and after Politico noticed that a typo on one solicitation form sent donors to a phone sex line. But for many conservative activists, it only accelerated and amplified a revolt against the RNC that had been brewing for months. It’s given the growing number of conservative PACs and projects a new selling point to potential donors. And it’s emboldened the sizable number of loose-lipped Republican activists who are working to create new institutions outside of Steele’s purview.

“This nightclub story is absolutely awful,” said Eric Odom, a Tea Party activist and the chairman of Liberty First PAC, “but the RNC just came off of a meeting in Hawaii, and that was even worse. I don’t think there are conservatives who are going to turn on the RNC just because of this story. I think it’s the nail in the coffin.”

According to Odom — who famously denied Steele a speaking slot at the April 15, 2009 anti-tax Tea Party in Chicago (Steele, at the time, denied that he had wanted to speak) — donors to Liberty First PAC have been submitting RNC-bashing notes along with their checks. One out of ten donations via Paypal, said Odom, came with a message along the lines of “2009 was the last year I’ll donate to a party.”

Mark Skoda, the leader of the Memphis TEA Party who launched the Ensuring Liberty PAC at February’s National Tea Party Convention, told TWI that the troubles that had beset the RNC would be impossible in his group — and potential donors knew it.

“We’re not going to be buying first-class tickets,” said Skoda, who is convening the first meeting of Ensuring Liberty’s board next week. “There’ll be no big parties. We’re operating like a business. I used to work for FedEx — these things like vast overcharges didn’t happen.”

Skoda, who said he “felt bad” for Steele after hearing the Voyeur news, emphasized that Ensuring Liberty would be “a complement,” not a competitor, to the RNC. It would back Republican candidates, albeit after making sure they fit the PAC’s exacting standards and didn’t just have an “R” next to their names on the ballot. But other conservatives are less diplomatic. On Wednesday night, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins sent a blunt message to supporters: “Don’t give money to the RNC.” On Thursday afternoon, the Leadership Institute — whose president, Morton Blackwell, is an RNC committeeman – posted a Facebook message commenting favorably on the Perkins news. (Blackwell is out of the country and did not respond to requests for comment.)

The evidence of conservative donors taking their money elsewhere is hard to track. In the final quarter of 2009, for example, the most prominent competitors for conservatives’ donations pulled in modest amounts of money. Our Country Deserves Better PAC, the group behind the Tea Party Express, had only $161,174 in receipts. The Senate Conservatives Fund, Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) PAC to aid his hand-picked candidates, raised $238,189. By comparison, the RNC raised $22,295,310. But activists point to the RNC’s low cash-on-hand numbers to make their case.

“The bottom line is that Michael Steele never should have gotten this job in the first place,” said one exasperated conservative fundraiser. “Nothing that’s happening now should surprise anyone.”

That criticism has surfaced again and again as conservatives court donors for their projects. On Thursday, Jonathan Strong — the reporter whose initial Voyeur story started the latest stampede against the RNC – cobbled together the last few years’ worth of negative stories about Steele’s managerial and financial problems. They hadn’t been enough to push conservatives away from Steele when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006 or the RNC chairmanship in 2009. Indeed, in 2005, conservatives rallied around Steele when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee hacked into the Senate candidate’s credit report to get the details on his personal bankruptcies.

Conservatives are no longer giving Steele a pass on those stories. The less faith small- and big-dollar donors have in the RNC, the more valuable they can be to other PACs, which are not being shy about soliciting their support.

“When I fly, I fly coach,” said David Bossie, the chairman of Citizens United and its political PAC, another competitor for small-dollar conservative donors. “We’re not lavish. If you donate to us, you know your money is going right back into the field to support conservative candidates, seeking out people who wouldn’t otherwise get support.”

The Susan B. Anthony List, the American Conservative Union’s PAC and Our Country Deserves Better can all point donors to their low-overheard campaigns in NY-23 or the Massachusetts special election for the U.S. Senate, contrasting those with the performance of the RNC.

The party committee is well aware of its predicament. “The press shop’s about as busy now as it was during the days that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) suspended his presidential campaign,” groused one conservative strategist who’s worked with the RNC.

The problem for conservatives is that dividing their efforts, and nurturing mistrust in the RNC, might damage the GOP’s 2010 strategy even if competing groups are well funded.

“You’re seeing a lot of small donors, who in other times would be discovering the party committee, going to these PACs instead,” said Anthony Corrallo, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies campaign finance. “Large amounts of potential money that the RNC may have been able to attract are now going elsewhere. And you’d rather see money located in the parties — the RNC can do much more coordinated GOTV [get out the vote] and advertising.”

RNC defenders could point the detractors to the left’s experience with divided effort. In 2003, a team of big liberal donors that included George Soros and Peter Lewis founded America Coming Together, spending more than $10 million for GOTV. Because ACT couldn’t coordinate with the Democratic Party or John Kerry’s presidential bid, some of its efforts were wasted. And in 2007, the disbanded group paid a $750,000 fine to the FEC for fundraising violations.

It remains to be seen whether conservatives can avoid a similar fate.