Just Stay The Hell Out Of The Way

By now hopefully most of you have heard that some members of the RNC and the Republican wingnut base want to conduct purity tests on candidates and current members of Congress so they can decide to deny funding to the campaigns of Republicans who do not pass said test. I think this is the greatest idea since sliced bread honestly and just about the only thing that will make this backfire on to Democrats is if we get in the way of what is sure to be a cannibalistic blood bath in the Republican Party next year.

What we need to do right now while they are having intraparty fights is concentrate on getting legislation passed. Oh sure we can do like we did back in grade school and when one GOP candidate challenge's another's conservative cred we can pump it up and make a big deal out of it in an effort to get the other guy to escalate the beef even further. But to me that should be the extent of it. These imbeciles are going to kill their electoral chances all on their own, they don't need any help at all.

Don't worry about generic ballots and polls right now, the mid term elections are still a year away. What Democratic strategists should be doing is tracking just how many contradictions all of the Republicans and I mean ALL of the Republicans are making in order to move to the right and win their primaries. As I said before the wingnut base doesn't give a shit about consistency. All they care about is conformity. So calling out their contradictions now don't really harm them at all, and it allows them to kind of catch themselves and not make too big a fool of themselves. Hell you already see Crist starting to flip flop BACK to his original position of supporting the stimulus. Thats not really what we want to have happen. We want him to stay on the wrong side of history and then bust his ass when the general comes around.

If we just keep documenting all the flip flopping it is going to be startling to general election voters in the middle how many hoops Republican candidates are willing to jump through in order to appease their base. Especially on issues having to do with global warming, something most people who aren't Republicans accept as reality. We want whomever to come out alive from a Republican primary to look like a wingnut right wing boogey man to the average person. And I can promise you that if we just stay out of the way and let them have at it, thats exactly what will happen.

Not only does this mean we won't lose as many seats as folks think we will right now, it also means we will pick up some seats that people aren't counting on. Arlen Specter had it right earlier this year when he switched parties (although I know a lot of people still aren't happy about that). He said that these wingnut groups putting wingnut candidates up to challenge Republicans who are already pretty far to the right by most folks standards don't really give a shit about winning and losing elections. For them its about taking the Republican Party as far to the right as they can go even if that means nobody trusts them to ever run the country.

So please folks, for the love of all that is good and cuddly, lets just sit on the sidelines for most of these fights. A little goading is ok once in awhile but lets not make ourselves a target that they can end up unifying behind. And lets not do such a great job of pointing out their hypocrisy NOW that they end up changing course and pulling back from the cliff.

Hell if they wanna jump, lets let em jump!