The Coming Republican Purges

Senator Jim DeMint told Arlen Specter last week he would be supporting Pat Toomey, Specter’s challenger in the Pennsylvania Republican primary. DeMint (R-SC) also said: “I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs.” This is stupid on so many levels. Besides the obvious uselessness of 30 principled senators for anything (they can’t even block an international treaty or a constitutional amendment), there’s a real damage here. DeMint has effectively told Maine’s Republican senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe that he does not want them in his caucus, and that may have consequences. He has also told moderate Republicans contemplating a Senate run in swing or more liberal states that they are not welcome either. That also may have consequences. But besides all that, this is actually a false choice. No electoral map offers us either option that he mentions. I would gladly take either one, but the next Senate may not even have 30 Republicans of any kind (they are already down to 40, and by my quick count at least 12 seats are endangered next year – assuming nobody else switches parties), and it will definitely not have 30 principled conservatives. In fact, both options (60 unprincipled Republican senators or 30 principled ones) are completely outside of realm of possibility for at least a decade. If Sen. DeMint knows at least 15 states of the Union where majorities of voters ”really believe in principles of limited government and free markets”, I’d love to see the list. Seriously, if you just count states that neither voted for Obama nor currently have a Democratic senator, you are already below 15. If you further disqualify states which had a Democratic senator or governor at any time in the last 5 years, you can probably count the remaining states on one hand.