Club For Growth Harms Gop Growth

I'm embarrassed by the party's decline among college educated and suburban voters. But consider this paradox: The Club for Growth, with whom I generally agree on substance, draws its primary support from the party's college-educated, suburban, more libertarian wing. Yet few have done more to run northeastern moderates out of the party or worked harder to shrink the party's base by cleansing it of "RINOs." The implicit assumption in the Club's strategy was that if more fiscally conservative candidates defeated incumbent moderates in GOP primaries, those conservative candidates would go on to win the general election, aided by gerrymandered districts. Too little attention was given to the possibility that some moderate voters might leave the party, or that the finer one gerrymanders districts, the more even a slight change in voter preference can lead to disaster.