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The Coming Republican Purges

April 29th, 2009 at 12:46 pm Andrew Pavelyev | 4 Comments |

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Senator Jim DeMint told Arlen Specter last week he would be supporting Pat Toomey, Specter’s challenger in the Pennsylvania Republican primary. DeMint (R-SC) also said: “I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs.” This is stupid on so many levels. Besides the obvious uselessness of 30 principled senators for anything (they can’t even block an international treaty or a constitutional amendment), there’s a real damage here. DeMint has effectively told Maine’s Republican senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe that he does not want them in his caucus, and that may have consequences. He has also told moderate Republicans contemplating a Senate run in swing or more liberal states that they are not welcome either. That also may have consequences. But besides all that, this is actually a false choice. No electoral map offers us either option that he mentions. I would gladly take either one, but the next Senate may not even have 30 Republicans of any kind (they are already down to 40, and by my quick count at least 12 seats are endangered next year – assuming nobody else switches parties), and it will definitely not have 30 principled conservatives. In fact, both options (60 unprincipled Republican senators or 30 principled ones) are completely outside of realm of possibility for at least a decade. If Sen. DeMint knows at least 15 states of the Union where majorities of voters ”really believe in principles of limited government and free markets”, I’d love to see the list. Seriously, if you just count states that neither voted for Obama nor currently have a Democratic senator, you are already below 15. If you further disqualify states which had a Democratic senator or governor at any time in the last 5 years, you can probably count the remaining states on one hand.

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4 Comments so far ↓

  • LeftCoastRebel // Apr 29, 2009 at 3:09 pm

    Sir, why is this stupid? DeMint’s point is that it is better for the party to have pricipled leaders than ones that are simply Republicans that believe what Democrats do.

  • danbmil99 // Apr 29, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    LCR trolled: “…it is better for the party to have pricipled leaders than ones that are simply Republicans that believe what Democrats do. “You can have principles and still have a big tent. It’s called agreeing to disagree agreeably. This was possible in the Reagan years. Today, where does a politician like Tom Ridge fit in? He doesn’t believe what most Democrats do, at least not on fiscal policy, foreign policy, and a host of other issues. His only sin is disagreeing with the 20% of Americans who believe life begins at conception. So for that reason, a popular Republican who was governor of a key swing state is banned from the ticket, and probably wouldn’t even bother to run for anything these days except perhaps as a ‘blue dog’ dem.What’s funny is of course the hard-core leftists are laughing as the GOP “purifies” itself out of existence. And because of these idiot-logues, for the rest of my life I’ll probably have the extreme choice of social liberals who want to tax and spend us into oblivion, and social conservatives who sometimes seem too stupid to even understand how to balance a budget (and who have failed miserably to do so every time they’ve been elected).There has to be a middle way.

  • ktward // Apr 29, 2009 at 7:20 pm

    danbmil99 wrote:”What’s funny is of course the hard-core leftists are laughing as the GOP ‘purifies’ itself out of existence.”Don’t forget the soft-core leftists, the center-leftists, and the centrists. Pretty much everyone except the Republicans.The Dems are the least of your problems. There are many of us who believe our Democracy works best with at least two viable Parties, so get your s**t together already.

  • ottovbvs // Apr 30, 2009 at 6:20 am

    The numbers Pavelyev mentions are interesting. I’m not sure I’d go as far as to say 12 Republican seats are at risk but it’s certainly in the 6-8 range if the the economy is recovering by next summer. The Democrats and Obama are going to get ALL the credit and the Republicans because their obstructionism has been so total are going to get hammered. Now many movement conservatives believe the wheels will be coming off the bus economically, but I don’t see it. Quite the reverse in fact. Obama has acted boldly and in collaboration with the Fed which has been turned into another cabinet dept almost and things are going to be on the upswing by next year.

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