After The Deluge: A Republican Abattoir?

Last week MC cast about the Minnesota political landscape and detected signs of blame being queued up in advance of a potential loss of the governorship. You can read what we wrote HERE. Now, one week to the day out from what increasingly looks to be a tectonic shift in the national political landscape MC finds alarming signs of a coming political bloodbath amongst republicans. This is both utterly unnecessary and avoidable. The rising level of snark from the Twitterati and the blogosphere does not suggest, however, that the malcontents understand the potential for the damage they can inflict.

First, MC understands the frustration with the professional right and the atrophy of principle in the republican party in the second half of the second Bush term. The losses of 2006 and 2008 are entirely understandable even though the latter has given us a frighteningly incompetent and hubristic president. The tea party movement, far from giving rise to a third party movement and the mortal danger that could have presented to the GOP, has largely been incorporated in the party. Always misunderestimated, Sarah Palin deserves enormous credit in sheparding that movement into the GOP instead of watching it grow from the outside. And no, we don't want Palin to run for president. But credit, please, where it is due. Besides, who more than she reduces the left to foaming at the mouth idiots?

Recently, however, certain conservative activists have seen fit to attack the "establishment" GOP in advance of the election. MC finds extremely little of value in bashing the party at either the state or national level. We've not been shy in this regard and we think there is value in constructive criticism, not criticism that advances the agenda(s) of the critic at the expense of the party.

Among others being lined up against the purity wall is none other than Karl Rove. MC is amused at this development while at the same time disgusted by it. There is much with which MC disagrees with when it comes to him and to his former boss, frankly. That disagreement, however, does not make him the enemy of the party or of the conservative tide likely to hit shore on November second. Unfortunately, for others it does.

Michelle Malkin attacked Rove for stating his belief that Christine O'Donnell was an exceptionally flawed candidate and that her nomination in Delaware likely lost a relatively sure seat to the Democrats. We do hope Michelle weighs in a week or so from today and lets us all know where Rove went wrong. MC never for a moment thought Christine was a witch but we did think her a loon and we've not exactly been proven wrong by the way she's run her campaign.

This week Dan Riehl (don't worry if you've never heard of him) attacked our friends at Powerline for the sin of taking the fraudulent, non-conservative Elmer Gantry-like Mike Huckabee to task for attacking Karl Rove. Anyone noticing a pattern here? Huckabee is a comprehensive fraud who guarantees the GOP failure at every turn. The late John Paul II decreed that no man or woman in Holy Orders could serve in government; it wasn't their calling. We wish the protestant world had an equivalent decree.

At any rate, Riehl attacked Powerline in typical snarling, self-satisfied juvenile fashion. It was an exercise in who we do not want leading the activists in the party after the election. You can read his drivel HERE. Displaying his trademark cool restraint, Scott Johnson responded and effectively demolished the alleged basis for Riehl's attack. You can read his sword work HERE. Never one to quit when behind, Riehl responded further HERE. We trust readers can discern who are the adults and who are the juveniles in these exchanges.

Inevitably, talk show host Mark Levin and his third rate mind (when he's in it and not having a nervous breakdown over the death of a pet dog: no joke, read his book about it HERE) gets brought into the fray. And all he can do is slash and burn the "establishment" in similar unhelpful fashion. Is this really what we have to look forward to after a strong election showing next week? His radio show, mercifully, airs late at night with a corresponding lack of audience. Try to listen to it sometime. It's almost as bad as Air America.

MC is certain that at some point the scope of sniping will expand to include the likes of Norm Coleman and others. We think this is a huge mistake. Rove, Coleman and others have created independent expenditure committees that have allowed many races this cycle to be competitive against the usual flood of union and Soros money. It's alarming that these critics cannot see the value in this. Do they have any idea how much help they have been to Sharon Angle and others?

Purity has been our word of caution since the Minnesota Republican State Convention earlier this year. We won't be told that we have less conservative principles simply because we can discern between stronger and weaker candidates. Conservatives can disagree about them without losing their status as conservatives, thank you.

Just as purity must be avoided on a state level, so it must be on a national level. The goal of politics is to win. Once in office, the goal is to achieve as much as is reasonably possible of one's agenda. If republicans overreach upon winning in the same way that Obama and the democrats did after their enormous back to back victories of 2006 and 2008, they'll be thrown out promptly. And if the purity conservative activists don't think the American people will keep doing this until one side or the other gets it approximately right, then they manifestly don't know the people they claim to understand and represent best.



Illustration above: Michelangelo's "The Deluge." Click to enlarge