By now everyone who pays any attention to politics knows what a joke the GOP primary for US Senate has been in New Jersey. Typically, we don't like to trash our own party but the NRSC and Senator Ensign put their collective noses where they didn't belong.

For those who haven't paid attention, here's the story. Two guys have been in the race from the start, one who really doesn't belong. Murray Sabrin is a fringe candidate who once ran for governor of the Garden State as a libertarian. He later ran for US Senate as a Republican. At the time the chairman of the state GOP told the New York Times he didn't consider Sabrin a Republican. This time out he's doing nothing more than running a sleazy campaign of attacks on any person who even considered getting in the race.

The other constant is a sitting State Senator who was an Assemblyman before that and a Freeholder before that. Over 10 years in elective office and the man has never voted for a tax increase, plus he is pro life, a good Republican. His name Joe Pennacchio, or as he's called on the campaign trail, "Jersey Joe."

One would think with a record like that the party, even the elite would be thrilled. Wrong! Remember this is New Jersey.

The elite of the party has thrown multi-millionaire, after multi-millionaire, after multi-millionaire after this poor guy. And he has done nothing but proved he is a class act, never once speaking ill of the GOP nor his opponents.

Apparently, from what we've been told, the NJ GOP wants someone who can self fund the campaign. So, what do the party elite do? They recruit Anne Estabrook who after 24 seconds of silence (it's on You Tube) in trying to answer a question on the Second Amendment suffered a mini-stroke and dropped out.

The elite of the party then asked Al Leiter, yes the baseball player to move from Florida and run. He said no. Then the morons asked a couple other people, all said no. Then they asked William Mennen, the heir to the deodorant thrown, he said it stinks, and moved on.

Finally they found a rich guy to self fund his own race in Andy Unanue former CEO and heir to the Goya Foods thrown. They guy quickly earned support from the establishment, even giving him five county endorsements all while he was (and might still be) in Colorado. All was going well until an enterprising reporter checked the archives of his own paper and discovered Mr. Goya was removed as CEO in court by his own family. According to court documents he frequently came to work drunk. Andy's defense? He said he never came to work drunk, only hung over. To make matters worse, another enterprising reporter called Andy's parents house, where he is registered to vote and the house keeper answered the phone and said Andy didn't live there but actually lived in New York City.

Since it appeared the wheels were falling off the Andy Bean bandwagon Senator Ensign and the organization he heads, the National Republican Senatorial Committee turned to a guy by the name of John Crowley. Crowley is, or was, another recruit with absolutely no elected experience but at least he had a good story. Two of his kids were diagnosed with a rare disease and he started a company to find a cure and made millions with it. There was a book written about him and Harrison Ford bought the movie rights. A winner EXCEPT he was incredibly indecisive. He said yes, then he said no, then Sen. Ensign, Sen. McCain and reportedly several others called him and begged him to reconsider. The NRSC even offered to give him resources, the very resources that were not available for any of the other candidates. He said yes again and then, on Sunday, the day before filing, he said no again, he's out.

So, after the filing deadline we are left with three candidates and an inept NJ GOP and an NRSC that should have kept their noses out of it.

The three candidates left are Andy Unanue, Murray Sabrin and State Senator Joe Pennacchio. And for the record there is dirt on Pennacchio, he wrote a series of position papers 20 years ago that Sabrin has been attacking him on. Good, bad or indifferent everybody knew those papers were out there when he was elected Freeholder, then elected Assemblyman and twice re-elected and then won the State Senate seat by a 2 - 1 margin.

Franky, the NRSC should quickly issue an apology to Pennacchio, admit he is a true conservative and back him.