It's been almost two weeks since Sarah Palin stood in front of a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference and made headlines for insulting Karl Rove, who then made more headlines when he fired right back. It's been almost two weeks since GOProud, the Republican LGBTQ group, was denied invitations to the biggest conservative event in the country. It's been almost two weeks since the CPAC panel on minority outreach turned into a shouting match when a white supremacist stood up and began talking about the benefits of slavery and segregation.

It's been almost two weeks since people started asking the question: where was Chris Christie?

He's one of the most popular governors in the country. In a state that has gone Democratic in the past six elections, the Republican governor has a 74% approval rating. He's shown that he can work with both parties to get things done, and he gained national recognition with his handling of Superstorm Sandy, which devastated his state in December.

So, where was he? Simple. He wasn't invited. The organizers of CPAC declined to invite one of their most popular politicians to an event that was meant to showcase the future of the American conservative movement. Why? Because he can be bipartisan. Because when President Obama toured the damage wrought by Sandy, Christie praised him for his help and was willing to work with him. This egregious sin was met with disgust and outrage from what used to be the lunatic fringe and is now the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Now Christie is on the outs with his own party, which has decided to embrace unelectable candidates and continue digging the hole they started in 2008, when Sarah Palin came down from Alaska and began chipping away at the credibility of the entire conservative movement.

Chris Christie is electable. As someone who leans (just barely) left of center, I can say that he presents conservative ideas rationally in a way that makes them appeal to a large percentage of voters. But that's not what CPAC wanted. They invited Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who didn't take their home states in their failed presidential bid last year. But they didn't invite the Republican governor of a Democratic state with an approval rating four times higher than Congress.

The conservatives had the option to shape the destiny of their party. They had the option to reject the extremist and unpopular direction that the GOP has been heading in favor of moderate politicians with reasonable ideas for the future of the country. But if there's one thing we can learn from CPAC, it's the width of the gap between the neo-con mindset and reality. Poll after poll has shown that these ideas, these politicians are unelectable and growing more unpopular by the day.

Yet they press on, making one mistake after the other, to the point where there is now a civil war raging inside the Republican Party. This year's CPAC showed us that the GOP is going to remain firmly in the grip of extremist conservative and religious views for the next election cycle.

Chris Christie probably isn't the future of the Republican Party, at least not yet. The GOP needs to come to terms with reality, and move back towards the center if they want to be truly capable of retaking the White House. Until then, we can expect more of the same from CPACs to come- more bluster, more squabbling, and less substance. As the GOP pushes further to the right, it's up to moderates like Christie to give a rational face to conservative ideals, and to guide their party out of the darkness.