[SideoutFred]

If you’re worried about the brand and RINO’s ruining it, I think you should completely get away from the GOP brand to begin with.

That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? The Dems have a huge tent and they really don’t care if their splinter coalition “harms” the brand. What you seem to be saying is conservative or bust. As a conservative, I love the fire and enthusiasm for that. As a pragmatist, I don’t think you will win many elections. A plurality of people in this country are conservative, but not a majority, and that’s the problem.

To change policy and yield influence, you must be in power. That means you can’t do it alone just on conservativism alone. That’s the reality of it.

[JHBowden]

To change policy and yield influence, you must be in power

This is true and trivial. If progressives are in power, then the policy changes are progressive. If conservatives are in power, then the policy changes are conservative.

So we agree in principle, though you think there is a benefit to electing progressives, perhaps because we would control committee chairmanships. You think it is pragmatic to set the agenda without enough voting for the agenda, like the effort to reform social(ist) security in 2005. Pragmatism looks pretty damn unpragmatic in practice.