Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in the special congressional election in New York’s 23rd district, obviously decided a few days ago that he hadn’t yet made a complete fool of himself.

So he seems to have started taking the necessary steps to do so. Make a complete fool of himself, that is.

On election night, he conceded the election to Democrat Bill Owens, after finding himself trailing by more than 4,000 votes.

When the initial vote tally was completed, Hoffman was behind by more than 5,000 votes. But, since then, “a standard process of correcting human errors in election night spreadsheets” has reduced Owens’ lead to 3,000 votes. On November 13, on Fox News, Hoffman started to make un-concession noises:

Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in the NY-23 election, appeared today on the Neil Cavuto show, where he kept the door open to challenging his narrow defeat by Democrat Bill Owens, who was sworn into office last week after Hoffman had conceded the race.

Hoffman said “I don’t think we’ll have an answer to this for at least a week or two,” and thats (sic) when the totals are completed, “each candidate will still have another week to protest.” He also said that with “20-20 hindsight,” he would not have conceded on Election Night.

Then, on Monday, in a paroxysm of mentor-worship, he officially un-conceded the election when prompted by that mighty leader of the Republican Party, Glenn Beck:

BECK: Alright, so let me ask you two questions. Are you currently bowing to me at the waist? (LAUGHTER) Have you bowed, or will you bow, to anyone, at the waist? No? Okay, good. Second question for you, are you officially un-conceding at this moment?

HOFFMAN: Yes, if I knew this information at the election night, I would not have conceded.

BECK: So are you un-conceding?

HOFFMAN: If that’s possible, yes.

Yesterday, Hoffman decided that had been a premature ejaculation, so — as Amanda Terkel put it at ThinkProgress — he un-unconceded:

Hoffman is not “un-conceding” the race, contrary to what he said Monday when pressed by Glenn Beck on his national talk radio show.

“What really matters is the count that is taking place today,” Rob Ryan, Hoffman’s spokesman told The Post-Standard. “When we see the direction that is taking, we will make the decision.”

Ryan added, “There has been no formal action to contest the vote, and depending on how the absentee count turns out we will decide how to proceed.”

As astute readers will have noticed, this act of strategically un-unconceding is only a precursor to what Hoffman’s people are hoping will be an act of re-unconceding. So depending on how the absentee count turns out, we may still see several more rounds of unconceding and reconceding.

Norm Coleman was more annoying, but he was nowhere near this funny.