“‘We’re becoming a church that would rather chase away heretics than welcome converts and that’s no way to become a majority party,’ complained former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who served as National Republican Congressional Committee chairman. ‘This makes no sense for those of us who are interested in winning elections.’…
“‘I don’t think national committeemen putting purity tests on the party is wise,’ said Reynolds, also a former NRCC chair. He called the move a recipe for ‘a perfect minority.'”
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“Or maybe the party will simply head down the path to ever-more thorough bouts of inquisition and purging, resolutely depopulating its conservative pantheon. Consider the central article of the first point on the list—a commitment to ‘lower deficits.’ That would not only banish former President George W. Bush and many members of the late Republican Congress, since they infamously squandered the surplus and ballooned the deficit, but also former President Ronald Reagan, whom the authors of the 10-point program, in a long preamble to their test questions, hymn as the ne plus ultra of conservatism…
“Maybe this current crop of Republican incorruptibles will find, as Mr. Viguerie wrote in 1988, that ‘responsibility for the ultimate failure of the Reagan Revolution lies with Ronald Reagan himself.’ They will start to suspect that even those who approve of this test don’t meet its standards; that pure conservatism means very few conservatives.”
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Via the Right Scoop.
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