True North

Pat Toomey, former conservative Republican rep from Pennsylvania and current president of the Club for Growth, writes an excellent post on the GOP’s reflexive defense of RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). 

You need to read the whole thing for its background.  The story is, of course, an important one in Minnesota, as the GOP grassroots in many districts have taken action to shun RINOs - including some sitting incumbents.

Toomey:

A Republican majority is only as useful as the policies that majority produces. When those policies look a lot like Democratic ones, the base rightly questions why it should keep Republicans in power. As the party gears up for elections in the fall, it ought to look closely at the losses suffered under a political strategy devoid of principle. Otherwise, it can look forward to a bad case of déjà vu.

Last week on the NARN, I said that in a sense - in the long-term, certainly - putting RINOs to the (rhetorical and political) pike is more important than defeating DFLers.  Hyperbolic?  Maybe - but also on point.  If we, the GOP, don’t offer a coherent choice (and in 2006, the voters were pretty clear that we did not), the voters will have no reason not to vote Tic.  Acting like Tics - like Reps. Erhard and Peterson and Tingelstad and the rest of the Override Six - eats the party’s seed corn; it gets a short-term electoral bump, at the expense of long-term viability as a party.

Cross-posted and comments welcome at Shot In The Dark.

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