Saturday’s big news is that liberal Republican Deirdre Scozzafava has dropped out of the race for an upstate New York House seat. Scozzafava, under pressure from a third party candidate, did not want to place third and become a kingmaker for her ideological peer, Bill Owens. Without a wedge in the Republican base, the race will likely go to the Conservative Party’s Douglas Hoffman. The New York Times, in its typical front page editorializing, frets that Scozzafava’s departure will “embolden” the right wing of the GOP. Unsurprisingly, the NYT misses the point entirely; the Scozzafava turmoil represents principled voters’ revolt against corrupt GOP leadership more than any comment on a socialist President.

As is the practice in New York, Scozzafava was selected to run on the GOP ticket by a panel of party bosses, not by a primary election. Though she was unanimously approved by the panel, Scozzafava hardly reflected mainstream GOP views, even by New York standards. She sat to the left of many Democrats by supporting abortion, higher taxes, union power grabs, and gay marriage. Her backers apparently assumed that because Pres. Obama had won in 2008, that the district had therefore moved left and demanded a liberal Republican.

As today’s news made clear, voters had not fundamentally changed their views. Hoffman quickly became a contender, racking up endorsements from national figures like Gov. Palin and Gov. Pawlenty. Once Hoffman became more than a protest vote, Scozzafava’s financial support eroded, forcing her to drop out. All this is good for everyone except neo-con political bosses.

While traditional GOP leaders have debated whether the party should turn left in the Obama age, grass roots voters have made their views abundantly clear. The massive tea-party movement of the past year has shown what voters want: less government corruption and overreaching. Tea-party voters do not reflexively identify with any political party, but they reject today’s obscene spending, corruption, waste, and socialism. They do not long for the return of GOP dominance, indeed they are fed up with the GOP’s brand of corruption and waste. They, naively, want a stop to the Washington game of influence pedaling and pandering to special interests.

Back to the New York House race, where political bosses thought a leftward shift was the path back to political relevance. Scozzafava’s implosion shows that voters did not abandon their overall center-right views, the GOP leadership abandoned them. Voters kicked Republicans out of office because they had become just as corrupt as the Democrats they ousted in 1994. By standing for nothing other than entrenched power and statism, the GOP became indistinguishable from the Dems. To be sure, the Democrats have misinterpreted the 2008 election as well, claiming a mandate for a radical leftward shift. Not to crush Obama’s ego, but any Dem could have defeated the GOP’s amorphous prune of a candidate.

On Tuesday, the GOP will likely count victories in New York (indirectly), Virginia, and probably New Jersey, but the backroom bosses should not toast themselves too heartily. Most likely, the victories will be due to a Dem Backlash, not a new GOP direction. Even though the Dems will likely lose, the Scozzafava debacle shows that the GOP brand by itself has no power. The New York House race shows that the GOP can only regain relevance by abandoning its power-at-any-cost tactics and standing for the principles of limited government and free markets. If the GOP knows which way the wind is blowing, Tuesday’s likely victories should not delay a desperately needed soul searching and house cleaning.