The case against Jack Kimball remaining as chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party can be summarized in two words: Chronic underperformance. In a press conference yesterday, Kimball tried to make the case that he should stay. It can be summarized in these 11 words: If I go, I’m taking the whole party down with me.

A state party chairman has three main jobs: raise money; effectively communicate the party’s message; and win elections. Kimball has failed to do any of those well.

He blames fundraising woes on the economy, while Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann rake in millions of dollars. He blames special election losses on circumstances outside of his control, but the party’s efforts on behalf of its candidates could have been better. He has often let the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s aggressive spin machine go unanswered.

Kimball, a former Tea Party organizer, claims he is building a bridge between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment. But whatever fragments of bridge there are, he is stringing with explosives. When Republicans of all varieties (not just establishment elites) expressed their widespread dissatisfaction with his performance and asked him to step down, he rallied Tea Party activists to his side. He portrayed the effort to remove an underperforming chairman as the establishment’s ideological purge of Tea Party elements from the state party. It is nothing of the sort.

With his rhetoric, Kimball is further dividing a party he says he is trying to unite.

We think Kimball is a good guy and a good conservative who wound up in a position for which he was ill-suited. It’s no dishonor to acknowledge that and step aside. It would, however, be an act of craven perfidy to deliberately rend the party in two on the way out.