In reviewing the recent primary activity by the Tea Party and the more conservative elements of the GOP I have been amazed at their willingness to give up seats for the sake of purity. Perhaps it is only because I am reading the books at the same time but I cannot help but be reminded of comments by Henry Kissinger with regard to the arms treaties signed with the Soviet Union during the 1970s.
At that time many on the right were outraged that the Nixon and Ford administrations were willing to not only dismantle some weapons systems but also to give up or delay deployment of newer systems. They charged that this was giving an advantage to the other side and was thus (in the view of some) tantamount to treason.
As Kissinger correctly points out these reactions were wrong for the simple reason that we really were not giving anything up. Many of the weapons systems outlined in the treaty had already been determined to be obsolete and were scheduled for dismantlement anyway.
In addition the Congress was in a strong peace mood and unwilling to spend money on newer systems. So many of the systems scheduled in the treaties were already being taken off line by our own Congress. Finally some of the newer systems were years away from being ready to deploy, and there was nothing in the treaties that stopped research, only deployment.
So in short while we did give up some weapons in the broader interests of peace, for the most part we were simply accepting the realities of old equipment, an unwilling Congress and the need to take time to bring new programs online.
I see something quite similar in the attitudes of the hard right with regard to the primaries.
Certainly I do understand that we all would prefer Congress to be filled with people who agree with us but that simply is not going to happen. We have to accept the realities of what can and cannot be accomplished and what resources are or are not there.
As a moderate I would prefer to have more moderate candidates win, but I know that is not always going to happen. In Alaska for example I would have preferred Murkowski to win and have my doubts about the GOP nominee, but at least in Alaska a conservative has a chance of winning.
In the case of Delaware on the other hand, many on the right say they want a ‘true blue conservative’ in office rather than a moderate like Castle. But the simple reality is that you will never have a conservative win in Delaware any more than you would have one win in the SF Bay Area (by the same token it is quite unlikely that you’d elect a conservative Democrat from those areas).
So the choice is between a moderate Republican or a liberal Democrat.
The activists in the Democratic party learned this lesson when they did not fight having the party run more moderate or even conservative candidates in the South and the result was a large majority.
The question is whether the Tea Party movement will discover it or whether they will give themselves a nice pure minority with no power.