Tea Party Dilemma: Honey, I Shrunk the Party

A national coalition of Tea Party activists called Thursday for rallies in several states to announce their dissatisfaction with the Grand Old Party. In an October 22 press release they state:

We are extremely disappointed that the Republican Party (and leaders like Newt Gingrich) has missed the message of the Tea Parties and continues to take conservative voters for granted. We applaud all courageous statesmen (Fred Thompson, Michelle Bachmann, and Dick Armey) and call on other GOP officials to put America’s values over traditional, often corrupt and morally bankrupt, power structures.

This is nothing new, and it is certainly nothing good. I am no partisan apologist, mind you, and would not support Ms. Scozzafava. My first significant political activity was on behalf of Pat Buchanan in the 1992 Republican primary in New Hampshire against a sitting Republican president. You may remember how that ended: Buchanan lost the primary, and President Bush lost the general election.

That election saw another significant split among conservatives. Ross Perot earned the votes of one-fifth of the electorate. While he did less well in 1996 (8%), he significantly split fiscal conservatives from Republicans. Bill Clinton never achieved 50% of the vote in either election–but took office nonetheless. (This didn’t seem to bother Al Gore at the time.) Perot’s organization eventually collapsed amid its own internecine struggles.

Grover Norquist, in remarks to the 2009 Conservative Heartland Leadership Conference, offered this about working together:

[The Right] should work to nominate and elect the most Reaganite Republican we can in any given district or state. Now, we need to understand that that’s going to be a little bit different in Maine than Texas, and so it’s like grading on a curve. I want the two Republicans out of Maine. They are much better than the D’s we would have had out of Maine. Okay? We’ve been disappointed in their votes from time to time. There are two teams, there are two major Parties in the United States. They are heading in completely different directions.

By picking a fight within the GOP and calling for an inquisition against RINOs, Tea Party activists are sowing the seeds of all our defeat. There are plenty of people within the Republican Party with whom we disagree. But reducing our current 218 members in the US House and Senate to a more pure 200 or 190 is no victory at all.

Chris Wilson of Wilson Research Strategies–and a fellow brigand from that 1992 Buchanan campaign–published a similar concern:

I don’t necessarily disagree with how the Tea Party members are expressing their anger and backing a candidate they believe in; however, their work will split the Republican vote and give NY CD23 to the Democrats.

The reason I believe the Republican and Conservative party candidates will fail is because they draw support from the same vote base. If you split the conservative and moderate Republicans in just about any race in the nation, the base erodes and the candidate will lose.

I understand the urge to clean one’s own house, but as I learned from Morton Blackwell, “don’t make the good the enemy of the perfect.” The issue in New York’s 23rd may very well be resolved due to pressure from national conservatives, but a campaign of eating our own is not something we should relish.