Crushing disappointment for those of us who were excitedly awaiting the Republican primary duel between two of the most wackadoodle right-wingers in Texas — Terri Leo, R-Spring, announced Tuesday that she is dropping her challenge to state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball in next year’s election.

Leo posted the announcement on her Facebook page, explaining that she hadn’t been aware that the Texas Constitution bars her from serving in the Legislature while she is an employee for a public school district. She works as a school counselor.

The civil war between very conservative “establishment” Republicans and the even more fervently anti-government arsonists in the GOP was the catalyst for Leo’s now-aborted challenge to Riddle. Riddle, one of the most right-wing Republicans in the Legislature, apparently had angered the even-more-extreme firebreathers in her party for some reason or another this year. So they turned to Leo, who embarrassed Texas as a member of the State Board of Education for a decade through 2012.

As we noted last month, Riddle’s extreme political positions include considering public education an idea “straight out of the pit of hell.”  Leo was a leading member of the education board’s hard-right faction. In addition to attacking instruction on the science of evolution, sex education and Islam in textbooks, she almost got a popular children’s book author banned from state curriculum standards because she thought that he was a Marxist. He wasn’t.

Leo and Riddle were already sniping at each other over who was the “real” conservative in the race. Sigh. This could have been so much fun to watch.