Augusta GOP needs new step

Affected by a level of delirium suggestive of a Stephen King short story, Augusta County Republicans have taken to feeding on their own flesh in desperate hope of sustaining starving ambitions. Worse, the loss of mind is spreading.
It is a month past the county GOP’s mass hysteria meeting, and the group does not know who its chairman is. Kurt Michael disputes this. He considers himself chairman, and so says the 6th District Republican Committee. Larry Roller disputes this. He considers himself chairman, and so says a 6th District Republican Committee fact-finding panel.
Those standing at the rim of the maelstrom might be confused, but those within it are not.
In that section of the swirl occupied by the conservative blogosphere, Michael’s backing is total. That group assures us that Roller and his tax-and-spend overlord, state Sen. Emmett Hanger, sought to loot the title, but gained only a facsimile. The actual crown remains perched on Michael’s head where it shall remain until he sees fit to remove it, or until others can do so by proper means.
In another section, Hanger’s minions proclaim the reverse. Never mind the district committee, Roller is chairman as determined by a vote of 141 of Hanger’s friends, including, presumably, Hanger himself.
Only this is clear: They’re all wet.
Slipping into the stew of disputes over rules, motions and votes that composed last month’s mass meeting poses risks to mental health similar to those posed to bodily health by the South River, so we will refrain from venturing deep into the morass. For the unaware, this much should suffice: Roller won a chairman vote, 141-103. Michael called for a second vote, which he won, 57-2. The rest is strange history.
Given the opportunity earlier this month to sift clarity from muddle, the district committee dumped into the water the sort of bacteria that lurks in the South River, which is polluted by, among other things, farm waste. The fact-finding panel determined that Roller’s election was valid, and the committee determined that Michael should remain chairman. Got it?
Meanwhile, the Virginia Republican Party is investigating. The stew thickens.
Whether his crown is real or paper, Michael plans to surrender it after the state party convention May 31. He has called for party officials outside the fray to then conduct a new vote. Thus, for the first time since the mass mess arrives the sound of something resembling sense, and that from a feature player in the madness.
We will not offer our speculation on what precisely went awry last month in Verona, chiefly because we do not know and secondarily because it matters little. However sympathetic we might be to Michael’s opposition to creeping liberalism in his party, his clutching at power accomplished little. Hanger also sullied himself in what appears to have been an orchestrated takeover.
Finding an official respected by all and without bias to conduct another vote for county chairman might be difficult, but it would be the appropriate next and final step. It is one the state Republican Party should take. Hanger and Michael should both refrain from injecting themselves in the process. Then the time might at last arrive when both sides can resume the good fight over ideas rather than engaging in a trivial one with one another over personalities.