Academic

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: GOP Moderates Should Practice What They Preach: For decades, moderate Repub?

By Glenn Reynolds

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: GOP Moderates Should Practice What They Preach:

For decades, moderate Republican officeholders and party officials — encouraged by experts in the liberal commentariat — lectured conservatives that the GOP had to be a “big tent,” that in order to win elections, that the party’s candidates had to “move to the center.” For that reason, defeated conservatives were supposed to support winning moderates, especially in liberal Northeastern states. Failing to do so was “divisive,” according to the experts. There was indeed wisdom in the principle, as articulated in William F. Buckley’s maxim that conservatives should vote “for the conservative most able to win,” and in President Reagan’s famous 11th commandment – “thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican.”

But some of the nation’s most prominent moderate Republicans are singing different tunes now, especially when Republican primary voters turn them out of office.

Read the whole thing. Remember when people were saying that the Tea Partiers were going to be the immature spoilers?

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on September 20, 2010 (boomark / email).