How Republicans Can Build a Big-Tent Party [Jim DeMint]

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 2009-05-02

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It's the Democrats who won't tolerate a diversity of views.

BY JIM DEMINT

Sen. Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party this week is no reason for Republicans to cheer. But his reason for leaving -- he faced an unwinnable primary election next year -- is no cause for soul searching. There is a question Republicans do need to ask: What is it that binds our party together?

In the wake of two successive electoral defeats and the likelihood of a 60-vote Democrat majority in the Senate, what does it even mean to be a Republican today? Moderate Republicans are right to remind conservatives that they cannot build a center-right coalition without the center part. And conservatives are right to remind moderates that Republicans only succeed when we rally around clear principles.

The real mistake is that Republicans became more concerned with staying in D.C. than reforming it.

Despite notable successes at both ends of Pennsylvania Ave., it seems to me that Republicans in Congress and in the Bush administration forgot a simple truth. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, if you aim for principled reform, you win elections in the bargain; if you just aim for elections, you get neither.

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this is from May.
DeMint has written many things since then clarifying his position, and he never compromises his conservative principles. Just listen to the speech he gave on 9-12. Oh and Glenn Beck, it was DeMint called health care Obama’s Waterloo, not that wimp Boehner.

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