Amid the miserable fight for House Speaker, which, one hopes, is over, with Mike Johnson now in the GOP's highest elected office, one only needs look to Argentina to see how actual adults behave when situated on a weaker side of a political contest.

According to this good explainer from Christian K. Caruzo at Breitbart News:

Defeated Argentine presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich, who led the main conservative coalition in the country prior to this weekend, endorsed libertarian opponent Javier Milei on Wednesday ahead of the upcoming runoff.

Milei came in second place in Sunday’s presidential election after socialist Economy Minister Sergio Massa — responsible for historically high inflation rates of nearly 140 percent — to secure a spot in the November 19 runoff. Sunday’s presidential election saw Massa in first place with 36.68 percent of the votes against Milei’s 29.98 percent and Bullrich’s 23.8 percent. By doing so, Milei, who established his Liberty Advances party coalition two years ago, locked Bullrich out of the race.

The headline writer, who is usually not the writer of the piece in a publication, seemed to gloat that the center-right coalition had 'collapsed,' and fallen apart, but that's utter nonsense. It's also not descriptive of what's in the piece.

What we see here is the center-right candidate in the race for Argentina's presidency, look at the results of the first round of voting, which came down to a 37-30-24 split, with the leftist leading, libertarian Javier Milei placing second, and moderates third, and making a sensible choice of aligning with the side of libertarian Milei as their endorsed candidate after being eliminated from the runoff.

Here's how it went down:

Milei invited Bullrich and her followers to cast aside differences, forget quarrels, and join forces to end Kirchnerism, the left-wing Peronist type of government that has ruled Argentina for nearly two decades. The term was coined from the names of late President Néstor Kirchner and his wife, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“The campaign made many of us who want change see each other in a confrontation, that is why I am here to end this process of aggressions and attacks,” Milei said on Sunday. “I am willing to make tabula rasa, shuffle and start anew, to end Kirchnerism.”

“Beyond our differences, what we have to understand is that before us we have a criminal organization that will leave no barbarity uncommitted to stay in power,” Milei continued. “Kirchnerism is the worst thing to happen to Argentina.”

The moderates weighed their options. They may not have liked everything about Milei, but against the radical left, which was the alternative, they came down on the side of Milei.

That decision gives Milei a massive advantage over the greedy, repulsive, corrupt leftist candidate in the November final round of the presidential election, which otherwise would have taken first place with the right's split votes.

They aren't split any more. They understand who the problem is. Compare and contrast to the insanity of the RINO creatures of the #NeverTrump camp who actually voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Despite the commonality of their values with President Trump's, they still chose Biden, who couldn't be more antithetical to them, and is a big failure as president. They picked that, over Trump! It also stands in stark contrast to the wretched characters in Congress, who could have had a star House Speaker in Jim Jordan, a man with a real vision which is exactly the kind of Republican House Speaker who makes a difference (think: Newt Gingrich), but instead chose to put out nonentity after nonentity, although the low-visibility Johnson certainly does seem to be a pretty good choice. They even conspired with the Democrats to get someone elected the Democrats could vote for.

That isn't how one wins the big stuff. This is why the GOP is constantly losing winnable contests. The moderates and RINOs just won't engage in political compromise.

The Argentinian center-right on the other hand, shows the right way to do it.  

Perhaps it was history from their neighbor, Chile, that drove the point home to Argentina's moderates. Back in 1971, a horrific three-way split between the conservatives and the moderates wasn't resolved with a runoff. Chile ended up with a nightmare communist leader, Salvador Allende, who won his office with 29% of the vote and left that country a smoking ruin. The left has since yelled that Allende was "democratically elected" when Congress and the courts authorized Augusto Pinochet to oust him (another democratic process), but that claim is misleading because Allende sure as hell didn't get anything like a majority of the votes. Had the conservatives and moderates united, there never would have been a communist running the show there.

The leader of Argentina's center-right, Patricia Bullrich, would know all about how that disaster happened.

So, she did the right thing.

Can you imagine Mitt Romney doing that? Or the wretched characters in Congress who thwarted Jim Jordan? 

I've known about Bullrich, for decades, have never heard a bad word about her, and think I might have actually met her in Buenos Aires in 2002.

It's impressive as can be to see her rapidly move her group into the Milei coalition, get a slice of the power, too, which Milei offered (he's going to tone it down a little to accommodate them), and above all, keep the focus on defeating the far left which has turned Argentina into a ruin.

That's how conservatives win. Both Milei and Bullrich understand this, which is why they were able to unite:

Milei invited Bullrich and her followers to cast aside differences, forget quarrels, and join forces to end Kirchnerism, the left-wing Peronist type of government that has ruled Argentina for nearly two decades. The term was coined from the names of late President Néstor Kirchner and his wife, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“The campaign made many of us who want change see each other in a confrontation, that is why I am here to end this process of aggressions and attacks,” Milei said on Sunday. “I am willing to make tabula rasa, shuffle and start anew, to end Kirchnerism.”

“Beyond our differences, what we have to understand is that before us we have a criminal organization that will leave no barbarity uncommitted to stay in power,” Milei continued. “Kirchnerism is the worst thing to happen to Argentina.”

Too bad our moderate Republicans don't get this.

Smart conservatives understand that one must unite behind the best-placed conservative in a race, even if it's someone they don't like, because the true enemy is always on the left. That's how conservatives win, and unless some kind of cheating happens, that's how the Argentine victory is going to be sweet. Too bad a lot of our moderate Republicans don't understand this at all. They prefer purity to losing, and all they ever get is losing.

Image: Screen shot from Todo Noticias video, via YouTube