First, there are a lot of people here who prefer the latter. These are the folks that are happy to nominate candidates who are unelectable in a general election, and then use their loss to highlight their belief that we are going to hell in a handbasket.
Second, if there ever was such a thing as an "establishment" hack, Jennifer Rubin is it. She makes a good point now and again, but it is hard to take someone so unimaginative, so lacking in vision, and so wedded to running "moderate" candidates too terribly seriously. I can see why most actual conservatives would be skeptical of anything she writes.
Third, I do agree we need to run good candidates. We should be nominating the most conservative candidates that CAN win. No more Sharon Angles or Christine O'Donnell's please. This is not TEA Party specific. It wasn't the TEA Party that got us that idiot Todd Akin - that was the social conservative, Huckabee wing of the party. Had we nominated the Palin supported TEA Party candidate Sarah Steelman, we would have won that Senate seat. Nor is this an endorsement of only supporting "mainstream" Republican candidates. Plenty of those lost as well where a good solid conservative might have won. The key is nominating the most conservative candidate that CAN actually win a general election. This means the candidate can't have a ton of baggage and skeletons in their closet, the candidate can't have said stupid things about rape, the candidate should have the political skills to actually win general elections (usually that means starting out at the very local level and gaining political skills on the way up to higher office), etc.
How Karl Rove, Inc. wasted conservative donors’ $300 million
Oddly enough, perhaps the biggest loser in last week’s Republican debacle wasn’t even on the ballot. He didn’t shake a single hand, nuzzle the napes of any newborn babes or promise eager voters pie in the sky or peace on Earth. His name was Karl Rove. And all he actually did was squander a staggering $300 million by backing candidates who turned winnable races into laughable routs, producing tepid ads transforming would-be zealots into couch potatoes and firmly establishing himself as the political world’s pre-eminent empty-suit analyst.
Perhaps even worse, he set himself up as the clearinghouse for wealthy conservative donors, hand-picking which candidates and super PACs to support and which to send away empty-handed. He convinced the GOP’s high-dollar donors that he alone was the “almighty architect” — the “Rovitect,” as it were — who could single-handedly end President Obama’s reign.
In so doing, he confirmed, as Bernie Madoff proved, that it is easy to con the wealthy 1 percent out of their fortunes if you claim to be an expert and create your own echo chamber.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2960384/posts
I think Christine should have agreed to be dunked into the flowing stream from the bridge to end the question of whether or not she was a witch. The election might have shifted in her favor had she agreed to it.