These "candidate vs. president" idioms are standard among Beltway elites who belong to what New York University's Jay Rosen calls "the Church of the Savvy." Their catechism says that anyone demanding a president deliver on campaign promises is naive because, allegedly, there is an inherent difference between what a candidate can tell voters and what that candidate can support as president. Those rejecting this "savvy" interpretation are therefore lambasted as petulant children who refuse to "take off their pajamas" and "get dressed."

It's a canard, of course -- one sculpted to excuse selling out. And there are two huge problems with it.

First, ignoring presidents' broken promises defiles our republican democracy. In America, we only get to choose presidents every four years, meaning we must rely on campaign promises as metrics for electoral choices. But if the entire idea of the campaign promise becomes an assumed joke, then we have no metrics by which to elect leaders.

Second, an obvious but taboo truth: There are almost no substantive reasons candidates cannot champion their election-year promises once in office. These pledges are made through deliberative processes. Candidates shouldn't make them if they're not serious about follow-through -- and it's not unreasonable to ask officeholders to at least try to honor the campaign commitments that informed voters' electoral decisions. That's especially true on something like drug importation, whose opposition is about enlarging profits, not, as Obama aides argue, about protecting consumer safety.

Drug companies already manufacture medicines in the developing world so as to evade U.S. labor, environmental and safety regulations. They then legally import those products for sale to Americans at inflated prices. The new bill would have merely let wholesalers, not just manufacturers, import medicines -- but at the lower prices the manufacturers concurrently sell those medicines abroad. Such wholesale importation is permitted throughout Europe and the rest of the industrialized world. So two questions: If the administration actually believes importation is unsafe, why isn't it banning current drug imports? And if the administration specifically insists wholesale importation is unsafe, then where are all the dead Europeans?

Certainly, some "candidate vs. president" differences might justify rare instances of dishonesty. A president might momentarily dissemble to, say, protect soldiers on the battlefield.

But fibbing for the public good is different than breaking promises for private gain. In the latter cases, "candidate vs. president" apologias are non sequiturs. They justify nothing -- and they clearly do not rationalize an importation U-turn by Obama designed only to protect a drug cartel.

That kind of power-coddling reversal insults voters, and absolving such an insult isn't savvy -- it betrays our nation's founding principles.

In a statement noticeably free of the accusations of theft and fraud that had accompanied his un-concession, Hoffman said:

Yesterday, the remaining ballots were counted in the 23rd Congressional District special election. The results re-affirm the fact that Bill Owens won.

Since, the morning of November 4th, many of my supporters have asked me to challenge the outcome of this race. Their concerns centered on the veracity of the new voting machines used, for the first time, in the majority of the eleven counties that make up the Congressional District. Over the past three weeks, we nearly cut Bill Owens' lead in half. Sadly, that is not enough.

The shift in support since election night highlights one fact; the Boards of Elections, both state and county, need to work closely to ensure the seamless use of these machines in the 2010 statewide and midterm elections.

I would like to thank my supporters for everything they did over the past four months. They proved that average Americans can stand up and make their voices heard, all the way from Watertown to Washington. They proved that the voters are sick and tired of wasteful government spending, high taxes and an ever growing deficit. And most importantly, that when it comes to politics: principles do matter.

While we may have lost the election, this race proved that Americans are sick and tired of the status quo in both Albany and Washington.

A spokesman for Hoffman, Rob Ryan, says Hoffman will be making that decision "over the weekend," according to CQ Politics' Emily Cadei.

Over the past two days, after Hoffman officially unconceded, victory in the current count has become mathematically impossible for him. The third-party candidate had hoped to gain on Owens during the tally of absentee ballots, but as the count stands now, it's actually Owens who's picked up a net of 61 votes during the process.

There was some measure of hope for Hoffman's supporters on Thursday, though, due to a report in a local publication that a virus had affected voting machines. An election watchdog has debunked that claim, however.

Win a couple of odd-year gubernatorial contests, it turns out, and the future suddenly looks a lot brighter. Bright enough, in fact, that the RGA had no problem Thursday morning showing attendees a "Saturday Night Live" clip spoofing Fox News Channel's coverage of the 2009 elections. The point of the skit was that the GOP and its friends at Fox were delusional, giddily declaring the 2008 elections overturned on the basis of two statewide elections with low turnout -- which the speakers at the RGA conference then proceeded to come close to doing themselves. It wasn't clear how intentional the irony was.

"For all the hype, [2008] was not a transitional campaign, it was not a transitional year," GOP pollster Ed Goeas said at a panel about the 2010 elections, after promising to pick apart some of the "many" myths about President Obama's victory a year ago. "After $700 million being spent by the Obama campaign, it was not a new electorate."

That was, in essence, the message of the RGA conference: So what if the only thing voters like less than the Democrats in Congress might be the Republicans in Congress? Who cares if the GOP has been reduced to a rump minority in the House and Senate, left on the sidelines with not much more to do than root for Democrats to fight among themselves? In politics, what matters is momentum, and right now, Republicans -- and quite a few Democrats, especially in private -- think they have it.

So Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie, the winners in Virginia and New Jersey a few weeks ago, were hailed as the heralds of a new GOP majority -- a majority of governors, granted, which doesn't really mean anything in terms of being able to pass legislation or implement policy on a national scale, but a majority nonetheless. (Both winning candidates demurred when asked whether Obama fatigue had helped them to the statehouse; it was local issues that won the day, they insisted.) No one mentioned that the party in the White House almost always loses the New Jersey and Virginia elections the year after a presidential race.

And Barbour came armed with a new poll by Zogby International that showed Obama's approval ratings and reelection numbers were perilously low in states with competitive gubernatorial races on tap for next year. Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle said there was no reason the GOP shouldn't aim to win every single state. "There's no state that we can't win," she said. "Talking to a Republican from Hawaii -- the first Republican elected in 40 years -- I'm telling you, we could win in every state."

But the most telling numbers may have been the ones Barbour touted a little later, in a press conference, after he'd shared them with governors and Republican loyalists Thursday morning. Forget the polling; what really got the RGA excited was another kind of stat. "We spent $23 million in 2006," Barbour said. "We're going to start 2010 with $25 million in the bank."

Raising and spending money is, after all, the main thing a group like the RGA does. Which is why the big "Victory Barbecue" on Wednesday night was sponsored by the Corrections Corporation of America, whose Web site proclaims it's "the private corrections management provider of choice for federal, state and local agencies." And why Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels apologized to "the vendors in the room" for boasting of his love of bidding state contracts out using reverse auctions. Everywhere you looked, corporate sponsors popped up. A mining company, an information technology company and a supply chain logistics company teamed up with CCA and the liquor lobby to sponsor a bash at Cindy's Gone Hog Wild, a bar down the road from the conference resort. A "trunk show and fashion boutique" was set up in one hallway Thursday afternoon, so attendees could take a break from hearing about the Obama administration's nefarious healthcare reform plans to get a little shopping in. (The governors, meanwhile, headed out for some skeet and trap shooting on the resort's grounds.)

That's not to say Democrats will have it easy next year, especially if the economy doesn't recover faster. Incumbents in either party are likely to struggle; fairly heavy losses in the House and Senate are probably on the horizon, though Democrats took so many seats in 2006 and 2008 that their majority in both houses is likely safe. Midterm elections almost never bring good news for new presidents, just like the New Jersey and Virginia results.

But the GOP crowing in Texas this week doesn't mean Republicans have it all figured out again, either. The candidates on the Republican line in major races next year may include Ohio's John Kasich, who was the House Budget Committee chairman after the 1994 elections; New York's Rick Lazio, who tried, and failed, to beat Hillary Clinton for the Senate in 2000; and Iowa's Terry Branstad, whom you may have heard of because he already served as governor of the state from 1983 to 1999. That lineup doesn't exactly scream out "new and improved," no matter how much Barbour talked up the GOP comeback.

"One of the things that really does separate this Republican Party from the Republican Party of 1993 is that this one is utterly devoid of ideas," said Nathan Daschle, the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, the RGA's counterpart. "You can say a lot of things about Newt Gingrich, you can say a lot of things about the Republican Revolution; one thing you can't say is that it lacked some kind of ideological base or agenda."

By contrast, Barbour boasted Wednesday that Republicans in New Jersey voted for a moderate, Christie, and in Virginia, they voted for a conservative, McDonnell. The main thing they had in common was their party label. As GOP governors gathered to bash the healthcare reform bill Thursday morning, they ran through the same litany of Republican "solutions" to the problem that their comrades in Washington have offered for months -- tort reform, insurance portability, tax credits. Their most famous ex-governor, meanwhile, was running around on a book tour, talking mostly to tea party types who won't exactly help win swing voters over. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who's supposed to be a rising star in the party and is planning a run for president in 2012, stuck to bland pronouncements as he moderated a domestic policy panel on Wednesday. "Citizens are being asked to live on the same amount of money, or less, than they did last year," he said. "They think it's reasonable that government should tighten its belt as well." No one at the conference could open his or her mouth without declaring the states to be "the laboratories of democracy" -- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal must have said at least a half-dozen times that unlike Washington, states can't print their own money. It was not, all in all, a rousing display.

What next year's elections may offer increasingly alienated voters, then, could be a choice between the Democrats, complete with their infighting and chaotic majorities -- who may not have done enough yet to fix the problems that they confronted upon walking into office -- and the Republicans -- who were the ones who helped mess things up in the first place. If the RGA gathering was any evidence, though, the GOP is aiming to win that choice by default. A win, after all, is still a win.