DAN RIEHL ON the fallout from Utah.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “If the establishment GOP lets itself become back biting spoilers, they are done. No one lives up to deals cut with back biters and spoilers. They don’t have to. They only need them to win, not govern. The GOP old guard need to find themselves a coalition to join. There is only one that has any momentum, and that actually believes the ideals the old guard has pretended to believe, the tea parties. Bennett could have joined them himself, but he chose to brazen it out.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jim Verdolini writes: “His base told him pretty clearly they would not stand for TARP, spending, and ‘compromise’ Health Care Schemes. Bennett, like most of or ‘leadership’ ignored them. Now he is retired. Eventually republican ‘leadership’ will understand that they work for us. Till then they will become ever more extinct.”

MORE: Utah Tea Partier David Kirkham emails: “After convention we walked up on the podium and took this picture. We took over the Utah GOP. All of our candidates were elected today without having to go to a primary (or booted in the case of Bennett). Obama has awakened a sleeping giant.”