I was just thinking of this while making a thread on TAZ and rather than create a new thread, I figured I'd bump this.
Is this another correct way of looking at it? If you search the templates for the custom CSS and templates come up (e.g., forum_list), use !important, but if there are no results, then !important wouldn't be necessary?
Also, Brogan, when you said "if you can't get the styling to stick," did you mean that without !important it works at first, but then stops, or doesn't work at all?