“We’ve got to drag the RINOs from the building. There’s no other way.”

That’s fine but you are then talking about making the party smaller. In other words, more appealing to a smaller number of people. People dragged from a party are not likely to vote for it. People not already a member of the party is not likely to vote for a party that goes more extreme in a direction away from them.

So what it looks like you are really talking about is making the party smaller but more idogically pure. That’s fine provided you have some other third party to form a coalition with but in a two party system you have basically just cut your own throat.

The resulting party might have much more appeal to the remaining members but it is likely to have much less appeal to everyone else. That doesn’t tend to get parties elected. The Republicans need to broaden their appeal at this point, not narrow it.

It isn’t the base that carries a party to victory, it is the party that carries the most independents that decides elections in the US.

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The Anchoress » No, really, I can’t blog today…

[...] BUSH: SCREW ALL YOUR BASE?: Flopping Aces is rounding up all the angry conservative reaction to Mel Martinez and shaking the fist. Powerline is kind of neutral on it and Hutchison is saying, quit bawlin’ and step center. I think I have opined previously on this question of base-screwing. I think “the base” abandoned Bush starting with the Miers nomination – a bit of rope-a-dope our strategy-minded president never got to play out – and they’ve rather enjoyed pummeling him on almost everything since then, portraying him as the chuckle-head who never seems to know just how important things are, or how vital it is that the president listen only to them. I think it’s debatable at this point who abandoned who. [...]

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