Are YOU Pure Enough for the GOP?

Written by Tim Mak on Tuesday November 24, 2009

Members of the RNC are considering a resolution that would outline ten principles for Republican candidates to adhere to and cut funding for candidates who do not agree with at least eight of the points. How many Republicans would actually pass the test?

Yesterday, it emerged that James Bopp, Jr., a Republican National Committeeman from Indiana, was circulating a resolution to be discussed at the RNC’s annual meeting next January in Hawaii.

The resolution, titled Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates, outlines ten principles that the sponsors want Republican candidates to adhere to (see below or click on link above for the list). Candidates who did not agree with at least eight of the ten points would be denied RNC funding and the Republican nomination.

In a remarkable perversion of a casual comment, Reagan is invoked to set the limit of conservative tolerance. If there was ever a case of a political hero being taken too literally, this would be it. The resolution reads:

Whereas, President Ronald Reagan believed... that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent...

Resolved, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee...shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee.

FrumForum will be reporting on any new developments surrounding this resolution, but first, a few quick thoughts.

Among the many problems in the resolution is the reinforcement of the GOP as the ‘party of no.’ The list focuses mainly on what the Republican Party finds intolerable, rather than what it would seek to achieve.

Seven of the ten policy points are statements of opposition: candidates must oppose future stimulus bills, government-run health care, cap and trade, card check, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and government funding of abortion. That’s fine – but by God, what do you support?

Further, although the resolution is aimed at moderates, other camps in the broader American conservative movement would likely fail the test. Many libertarians, for example, would fail to reach eight points – the two foreign policy points being likely points of disagreement, and the point on the Defense of Marriage Act being the third.

Indeed, one is left wondering just how many Republicans would pass the test. Would Senators Olympia Snowe and Lindsey Graham manage to scrape by? How about George W. Bush? Or John McCain?

Ironically, it is possible to question whether Reagan himself would have made eight points. Steve Benen at Washington Monthly notes that Reagan had run deficits, approved an immigration measure that much of the right resented, and withdrew Marines from Lebanon in 1983 after the barracks bombing in Beirut. There you go - three points and you're out.

However, by far the greatest irony is that Reagan’s tolerance for diversity within the GOP is being ignored in a resolution that invokes his name over and over again. Goodbye to Reagan's big tent, hello to Bopp's short list.

The ten policy points outlined in the resolution:

1. Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill

2. Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare

3. Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation

4. Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check

5. Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants

6. Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges

7. Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat

8. Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act

9. Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion

10. The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

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