For the right, the only mistake is in working outside a rigid ideological fence. As long as you stay within this fence -- no matter how badly this restriction is hampering you -- you're golden. Move outside that fence and you become a "Republican In Name Only" or a RINO. If you're a moderate, you're a RINO. If you're an ideologue on all but one issue, you're a RINO. If ever in your life you've been forced to accept reality and acknowledge global warming or the failure of unregulated capitalism or the healthcare crisis, you're a RINO. It's funny, but people on the right like to see themselves as rugged individualists, but expect every one of their increasingly shrinking coalition to be exactly the same. You can be as individual as you want to be, so long as you think the same things and believe the same things as all the other rightwingers. Have an independent thought, conclude that what you're trying isn't working, and they fire you out of the coalition in a cannon.In 2006, I wrote a post I titled "Coalition of the Barely Willing" where I pointed out this Republican groupthink. Having just suffered massive losses at the polls, the party was arranging itself into the infamous "circular firing squad" that political movements tend to fall into when things go all haywire. It wasn't the first time I'd written about the Republican demand for ideological purity among its ranks -- and this post won't be the last. It's a mistake Republicans refuse to learn from.
It tends to happen most after a big loss. Another common Republican belief is that if what you're doing isn't working, it's because you're not doing enough of it. The Republican Party hasn't lost big in two straight elections because they've been too right wing, they've lost because they haven't been right wing enough. You heard it after McCain lost; the GOP had to return to it's "roots." Unfortunately, they didn't mean it's actual roots -- i.e., the progressivism and dedication to human rights of Lincoln -- they meant what they like to pretend are their roots -- the party of a Ronald Reagan who exists only in their imaginations. In truth, those roots go back to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and we see the return to those roots in the rise of the teabaggers and Glenn Beck... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
