UPDATED: As I note here, Jamie Radtke insists through her lawyer and the press that she was not drinking, so you’ll have to ignore the reviews of those spectators who saw her performance and thought she had been. That, of course, raises other questions about her abilities on the campaign trail to give that performance sober.

And then these:

I tried to cut myself with a butter knife, it was so horrendous and never-ending.

and

she gets an invite, gets a nice slot to talk, gets drunk, and gets so embarrassing that I have to duck away rather than embarrass her further with interviewing her

and

I mercifully did not film it.

and

I hadn’t realized that it was going to be her campaign speech, and then I was mesmerized by the trainwreck.

and

She was a drunk rambling idiot that took 30 minutes to introduce a director who himself was confused.

and

It was beyond painful. At first, I was just embarrassed for her and felt a little sorry for her. But by the end of it – which I for while feared would never arrive – I was all ‘OMG, I *hate* you, STFU.’

After this incident, perhaps I was a bit too vocal I’d not actually be supporting her campaign. I assume this act of self destruction in front of 400 attendees of the RedState Gathering is why Jamie Radtke’s campaign decided to orchestrate a hit job on me in the Politico after I both endorsed her campaign and allowed her to speak at the RedState Gathering.

The basic allegation is that I have not aggressively pushed her campaign because my bosses at Eagle Publishing have a relationship with George Allen and asked me not to support her.

Actually, my bosses at Eagle Publishing do in fact have a relationship with George Allen, and a very good one, and asked me — after I endorsed her — to please go slow for once instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

I love my bosses and my employer and the owner and was happy to accommodate their very first request in my five years of employment to go slow on an endorsement.

To be clear: my bosses were not telling me to stay out, but telling me to wait a while. Perhaps Cuccinelli would get in. Perhaps someone else would get in. Perhaps Radtke would implode.

Over the past number of months we have fronted multiple posts to the front page by Jamie Radtke and others touting her candidacy. I’ve made clear repeatedly that I would not be supporting George Allen because, while he will fight the Democrats, I see no indication he’ll ever fight Mitch McConnell.

In any event, the Radtke campaign clearly was not getting traction and they and their proxies began incessantly harassing me to write about her campaign and do what I did for Marco Rubio and Mike Lee.

I didn’t want to be the bad guy or burn a bridge needlessly, so instead of saying I wouldn’t because the campaign sucked and was going nowhere or that I would wait and keep being pestered with “now will you do it”, I told them I could not. It seemed at the time to be the easiest way out.

I was certainly wrong.

For some reason, the Radtke campaign thought it would be a good idea, after I endorsed the campaign and let her speak at the RedState Gathering — to introduce the director of “The Undefeated” no less — to put me in an awkward position and also try to play the victim.

My only guess is that after her performance at the RedState Gathering, I was perhaps more frank than I should have been that I’d definitely not now be helping her. So the campaign preemptively decided to spin a “poor pitiful me” story to the Politico.

Jamie Radtke is not a victim. She’s a candidate. And clearly a bad one at that.

Game over as far as I’m concerned.