As I noted below, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) thinks the Republican party will be fine as long as it embraces “mainstream” Americans like Pat Toomey, who stick to their laurels and don’t push conservative voters on to a trail of tears to the South. Perhaps Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) will turn to that advice for when, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he addresses the question, which he raised yesterday, of how to turn the GOP into a national party once more. Or perhaps he’ll pay more attention to Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), who wrote penned for the New York Times a counterpoint of sorts to Jim DeMint’s bizarre interpretation of Arlen Specter’s move into the Democratic party.
“Republicans [have] turned a blind eye to the iceberg under the surface,” she wrote, “failing to undertake the re-evaluation of our inclusiveness as a party that could have forestalled many of the losses we have suffered.”
It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of “Survivor” — you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party.
Senator Specter indicated that his decision was based on the political situation in Pennsylvania, where he faced a tough primary battle. In my view, the political environment that has made it inhospitable for a moderate Republican in Pennsylvania is a microcosm of a deeper, more pervasive problem that places our party in jeopardy nationwide….
There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.
That’s the second time in about 24 hours she went to the Times to sound off on the problems facing the GOP and its moderates. Yesterday, she told the Times‘ Carl Hulse that “[o]n the national level of the Republican Party, we haven’t certainly heard warm, encouraging words about how they view moderates, either you are with us or against us,” adding that Republican leaders don’t understand that “political diversity makes a party stronger and ultimately we are heading to having the smallest political tent in history for any political party the way things are unfolding.”
Trouble in paradise?
