Some Positive Stuff About A Purge

I actually agree with a lot of this. I wanted to write more about it -- I have some reservations here and there -- but overall, I agree with this.

This was sent in by someone who shall remain nameless by his choice. But It strikes me as some silver-lining here, even for those of us who wanted a better chance at this seat.

Below, his words:

Like a lot of other people, I can see the benefits of having Castle in the majority. However, I think in the end, the positives that come out of this race outweigh the negatives.

1) This sends a clear message to the Republican party that they should not back RINOs for election races. Period. Look for viable conservative candidates or lose. In the long run, this will help ensure we have MORE conservative voters in states like Delaware because we will have real conservative candidates communicating the message to voters. Having lived in New York State, I know firsthand what a wasted opportunity the Pataki governorship was. Republicans held the Governor's office for 12 years and used that position to make deals with the unions and drive the state closer to bankruptcy. It is no surprise that people in New York State are not conservative - there has been nobody in Republican politics communicating strong conservative ideas since Reagan campaigned there in 1984. The Republican establishment in New York is about one thing: everyone getting their piece of the taxpayers' pie. The Paladino win, like the O'Donnell win, indicates that voters want something better and they will turn out if you give it to them. While Paladino and O'Donnell will probably lose, I think it is a lot more likely that we will see real conservative candidates emerge in those states and that is a good thing.

2) Any Republican who wants a future in politics is going to have to move right. This is going to make it a lot easier to keep everyone on the same page in the next election. The Dems have been pretty effective in this -- why do you think so many Democrats jumped onto health care? They didn't dare vote against it for fear of a primary challenge. Yes, we'll lose Castle's vote on 80% of the votes where we don't need it (and the one, majority leader, where we do). But in return, we are going to get a lot less RINO like behavior and a lot fewer RINO like candidates. Given that the RINOs end up spending more time inflicting damage on their own party, than on the Democrats, I score this a win.

3) We are now one cycle closer to getting rid of Lindsay Graham in 2014. Why don't viable conservative candidates line up to vote against RINOs? Because they have been told by the establishment that they can't win. Thus, we are usually stuck with liberal Republicans in places like South Carolina, Florida, and rural upstate New York (I'm thinking of former Rep. Amo Houghton here) where a conservative candidate could win easily. Well, if I was a state legislator, or a wealthy business owner in Maine or South Carolina, or wherever a RINO politician holds public office, I would be a lot more likely to jump into the 2012 race now that we've seen Toomey, and Rubio, and Miller, and O'Donnell all win races that they couldn't possibly win by running on real conservative principles (and I think it is likely that all of those mentioned who are running in 2010 will win the general election, by the way). Lindsay Graham? Finished. Olympia Snowe? Kaput, even in Maine.

4) The ability of the Republican party to hold onto the new, more conservative coalition, depends on them actually delivering when they take office. We have Republican leaders right now who are not willing to say that we will vote to repeal Obamacare. Seriously? If we want to keep this coalition and not see it disintegrate, the Republican establishment needs to feel some pain and they need to get themselves in a 12-step program and admit they are hooked on spending and terrified of the MSM. I think a fragile Republican majority in the Senate that empowered politicians like Castle and Graham and Snowe would have ended up being a disaster. I think the Miller/O'Donnell wins change the dynamic as nobody in the caucus can afford to allow the moderates to dictate the agenda anymore for fear that they will be primaried.

5) Unless we get to 52 or 53 seats, a Republican majority is a Republican minority. There is a reason we call them RINOs. They aren't really Republicans at all. If anything, they despite their colleagues in Congress nearly as much as they abhor the rank-and-file conservative voters who help elect the to office. At the end of the day, RINOS like Castle and Snowe and Collins and the like are never going to truly back the change that is needed in Washington. The allure of media attention and the applause they will receive from the media and their blue-blooded friends at the cocktail parties in NYC and Washington are too powerful for them to resist. Frankly, I don't have any faith that a 51-seat Republican majority wouldn't become a 50 seat Democratic "majority" + Joe Biden. As we have seen with Jeffords, and now with Crist and Specter and Murkowski, they could care less if the Democrats win the seat and would just as soon become a Democrat if that is what was needed to hold onto power. Heck, they'd probably prefer it.

I want a Republican majority in the Senate as much as anyone. I still think we can get there, but I only want to get there if the majority is actually going to govern in a conservative direction. Midterm elections are not about how much money you have, but how many voters you are going to bring to the polls. O'Donnell has a hard road, but the Toomey, Rubio, Miller, O'Donnell Run has real people who never were excited about politics geared up like never before. Rather than seeing the momentum stall, we are seeing it building and we are seeing the establishment wetting itself in fear. That's a good thing and it bodes well for real change in November.

posted by Ace at 01:00 PM

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