“Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), suggested that conservatives need to have a more realistic sense of which races are winnable and with which candidates.

“‘Folks on the right, and frankly I’m one of them in terms of voting record, have to yield to the world as it is and not necessarily how they wish it would be,’ Cornyn told Reuters for a story about centrist Rep. Mike Castle’s (R) bid for Senate next year in Delaware…

“‘The world as it is in Delaware is that if Mike Castle didn’t run, Beau Biden would be the next senator from Delaware,’ Cornyn said, pointing to Vice President Joe Biden’s son, the state’s attorney general and a likely 2010 Democratic candidate against Castle.”

***
“With tea party activists increasingly dictating the party’s agenda, moderate Republicans are getting eaten by their own, and it didn’t take long for some of Graham’s once loyal supporters to turn on him. The Charleston County Republican Party voted unanimously last month to censure Graham on a litany of complaints. They claimed that South Carolina’s senior senator ‘in the name of bipartisanship continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism.’ The group, closely aligned with the Tea Party movement, accused Graham of holding the GOP ‘hostage’ for engaging on global warming and even lambasted him for having ‘stated on many occasions that his primary concern is to ‘be relevant.” Graham, who won reelection in a landslide last year, isn’t worried. ‘I’ve never felt threatened by people who say that it’s a crime or sin to work with the other side because most Republicans and Democrats understand that for the good of the country you have to do that,’ he said in an interview just off the Senate floor…

“Make no mistake, Graham’s conservative credentials are rock solid. He has a 90% rating from the American Conservative Union. The only difference is he’s willing to look for compromise. ‘Two senators from opposite parties sat down today and discussed solving a problem,’ Graham says with a wry shake of his head, ‘the fact that that’s news is sad. That’s where we’ve come as a country. That’s why the [approval rating of] Congress is at 25%.'”