As we learned earlier this week, the Republican Party, in what can only be described as a wholesale capitulation of their party to the teabaggers, circulated a proposal that would create a 10-point "purity test" for prospective candidates. The purity test would be used to weed out candidates unworthy of Republican support in the following way:
According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues– in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire – would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.
Hey, it's their party, and they can purge if they want to. But what happens when one of your most prized national recruits, the leading candidate to represent your party in a critical U.S. Senate race, would be likely to be disqualified under the new GOP regime of ideological cleansing??
Mr. Castle in many ways is a textbook example of why some Republicans think the party should avoid such purity tests. He appears to be, without dispute, the strongest candidate that the party could choose to take back the seat.
But in the course of his career, he has taken positions on abortion, energy and gun control that could, at least in theory, lead Republicans to argue that he has failed the test laid out in the resolution. If that were the case, the Republican National Committee might have to sit out a Castle-Biden race.
That this rigid insistence that candidates obey in lockstep will result in potential political defeats is obvious. Delaware does not want a teabagger wanna-be as their Senator. This became obvious
in recent polling, where Castle's support has sunk as he has studiously toed the party line.
However, in a clarification to Hotline On Call, the RNC member that wrote the purity test claims that past votes are not applicable to the checklist. Only current and (via statement/questionnaire) future voting patterns will be taken into account, according to Midwestern GOP leader Jim Bopp.
This looks, if possible, even worse for supposed moderates like Mike Castle. Castle has, in his two decades in the House, cast votes that have run afoul of the GOP's ten-point checklist. By that virtue alone, he would appear to be disqualified from GOP assistance.
However, he can get the teabagger version of secondary virginity if he just toes the right-wing line from this point forward.
In other words, if Castle behaves politically the way that he has for two decades, and the GOP wants to be true to their new masters, they would have to sit out the Delaware Senate race. But if Castle becomes a poor-man's Jim DeMint, he can still be eligible for support from the political party he has been a member to all his adult life.
That might explain why Illinois Senate aspirant Mark Kirk is trying hard to rebuild himself as a right-wing ideologue (even voting for Stupak-Pitts and royally pissing off abortion rights groups that have long supported him), despite the fact that he too has cast votes in the past that make his fealty to the right-wing checklist suspect.
Bopp's clarification did have the effect of "saving" virtually the entire 2010 NRSC recruiting list.
Without that "past votes don't count" proviso, you might well have to kick Rob Simmons to the curb, as well. But now Simmons carries a teabag with his Constitution in another transparent political conversion. Therefore, that probably passes muster with Bopp's definition of GOP loyalty. Essentially, the bulk of the most prized recruits for the NRSC are going to have to live without Republican support, unless they are willing to forsake all political integrity by refashioning themselves with substantial changes to their ideological worldview.
So, when these men stand before the voters in 2010, they will either (A) have been completely forsaken by their own parties or (B) have lost substantial credibility with their electorates because of their dramatic reinventions on Election eve in order to appease the "moderates need not apply" regime that controls the GOP.
It is, of course, telling this insistence on absolute fealty to the party line comes from the same political entity that (along with an assortment of allies and useful idiots in the traditional media) have complained incessantly about the lack of "bipartisanship" coming from the Obama administration.