Why RINOs Are Despicable

I have never made any secret of how little use I have for Rockefeller Republicans. I figure if so-called "moderates" have such a problem with tax-cutting and life-veneration and the spectre of playing partisan hardball, they can take care not to let the door hit them in the back of their front on the way out.

However, I have never advocated, and indeed have for years argued against, actively purging the GOP of its Rockefelleroids. Any party that aspires to build a majority governing coalition has to be willing to tolerate some degree of internal ideological diversity - the fabled "big tent." I don't have any problem with "dissidents," for lack of a better term, remaining within the party, as long as they don't try to foist their single-issue differences on the majority of the base and instead make common cause on the areas of mutual agreement. Live and let live, as it were, as long as the big picture oars are all pulling in the same direction. (Sort of like the pose Rudy Giuliani was attempting to strike before he pitched it overboard last week)

It's when those oars start spinning the ship of state in place that I start losing it. An ignominious example of that took place late last week:

Moderate Republicans gave President Bush a blunt warning on his Iraq policy at a private White House meeting this week, telling the President that conditions needed to improve markedly by fall or more Republicans would desert him on the war.

The White House session demonstrated the grave unease many Republicans are feeling about the war, even as they continue to stand with the President against Democratic efforts to force a withdrawal of forces through a spending measure that has been a flash point for weeks.

Participants in the Tuesday meeting between Mr. Bush, senior Administration officials and eleven members of a moderate bloc of House Republicans said the lawmakers were unusually candid with the President, telling him that public support for the war was crumbling in their swing districts.

One told Mr. Bush that voters back home favored a withdrawal even if it meant the war was judged a loss. Representative Tom Davis told Mr. Bush that the President’s approval rating was at 5% in one section of his northern Virginia district.

“It was a tough meeting in terms of people being as frank as they possibly could about their districts and their feelings about where the American people are on the war,” said Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois, who took part in the session, which lasted more than an hour in the residential section of the White House. “It was a no-holds-barred meeting.”

Several of the Republican moderates who visited the White House have already come under political attack at home for their support of Mr. Bush and survived serious Democratic challenges in November.

No surprise here. Rather, this is to be expected. Indeed, one can wonder what took them so long to gang up on Bush like this. "Moderates," after all, stand for nothing and therefore have nothing to look out for but their own self-interest. And we know that they don't mind at all being in the minority, if not actively prefer it. They just want to keep their membership in "the club," keep sucking a paycheck out of the taxpayers, get pats on the head from their Donk masters, and otherwise make their daily tee times. Doing what's right, keeping one's word, taking a stand on principle when it's no longer popular isn't in their self-defined job description.

As pathetic as these summer soldiers and sunshine patriots are, though, that is not the despicable part of their little White House pilgrimmage. This, however, is:

It appears they did speak in all candor to Bush about how he has no more credibility on Iraq and how things must change and how September is the month when change must be registered or the whirlwind will be reaped.

Then, deeply proud of their candor, they instantly called Tim Russert to fill him in so that he would go on NBC News and report on it.

Which he did. And now their constituents know they opened a mouth to the Big Guy and told him to straighten up and fly right.

So I think we can presume the true purpose of their visit was not the message they delivered, but the phone call they made to Russert afterwards.

It's not bad enough that this "gang of eleven" is willing to throw their own president, their own country's national security, every bit of progress we've made over the past six years in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism, and the lives countless thousands or even millions of Iraqis (and, inevitably, Afghanis as well), into the nearest woodchipper just to save their own worthless pol asses; no, they have to be SEEN doing it as well. They have to run to the very establishment press that will NEVER see or treat them as anything but the enemy and boast of their treachery in order to grovel for approval - as though that's going to buy them "protection" in next year's re-election efforts.

Oh, I know the way the prevailing political winds are blowing these days. You couldn't keep Rockefellas on the GOP reservation in the current environment with giant staple guns. But even for perfidious devilspawn, this depths-plumbing ankle-grabbing is beyond the pale.

The consolation for me isn't that most or all of the "gang of eleven" will most likely go down next November anyway; it's that they will SOOOOOOO richly deserve it.