Looking at the political realities for 2012, Daniels echoes the psychoanalysis offered by the GOP veteran Barbour last year in an interview with Newsweek: “People are crazy if they think we win by getting more pure. We win by getting big.”Barbour, the usually savvy and successful former head of the Republican Governors Association who stands on his state’s record as being the “safest state in America for an unborn child,” defended Daniels and strengthened the call to focus on economic priorities at CPAC: “The main thing is to elect a Republican president in 2012. It’s why we all need to work together…unity is what we need, that’ll help us win. Purity is not a winner in politics.”

The battle of purity versus pragmatism, or electability, is really a choice between the lesser of perceived evils. Conservative voters will have to determine which seemingly fatal flaw they can live with in an imperfect-but-electable GOP candidate—or face the alternative, a second Obama term…

There should be room on the GOP ark for conservatives, moderates, and independents of all stripes.