Ceding Defeat in the Name of Victory: The Case Against Blue-State RINOs

"Bruce Walker recently wrote a piece in American Thinker with the memorable title 'Of RINOs, Moderate Democrats, and Men.' In it, he argues the G.O.P. should target red-state RINOs, while giving blue-state RINOs a pass. His premise is familiar--in a blue state, a RINO is the best we can do. And as always, this premise is dead wrong. The danger to Walker's line of thinking--if we apply no pressure from the right, our RINOs will only feel pressure from the left. And we simply can't afford to cede our people to the left, no matter how liberal their constituents are purported to be."

Here’s the problem, and it’s the same one the democrats are having on their side with Health Care.

If we run a conservative in a primary against a RINO, and they win, the RINO could bolt to the other party, and the conservative probably won’t win the election (in a blue state).

If we run a conservative and they lose, it could embolden the RINO to continue their RINO ways, and listen even LESS to conservatives because they don’t need to.

The only real leverage if we can’t replace the RINO is to threaten them with a primary or loss of support, but also offer a carrot of a pass in the primary and begrudging support so long as they meet some minimum set of standards.

This is how it was for years; the leadership lets the RINOs vote against the party as often as necessary, while requesting and getting party discipline when needed.

But if the RINOs see that the leadership can’t protect them, the RINOs stop cooperating, and appeal to the people they need to get elected (the “independents” in a blue state, who are more liberal).

For comparison, what would you do about Blanche Lincoln? We want her vote against health care. Of course, she’s a Democrat in a redish state, so we’d like to replace her with a republican. But if we mount a serious challenge, her only hope to winning re-election is to appeal to the base of her party, which means voting FOR the health care and other bills. While that might make our job easier in replacing her, it also means we might have a ruined health care system that we can’t fix until 2012 (we have to win the hosue and senate and the presidency to fix things, because Obama will veto things).

The blue-dogs in the house have this problem now. They voted against health care because they know their districts are republican, but that means they are getting attacked from the left, who probably rightly are saying that the blue dogs are going to get strong general election challenges from republicans anyway, so there’s no point in trying to be like republicans.

The RINOS like power, so when we are a minority, there is a natural tendency for them to lean more to the liberal side.

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