Radio host and Townhall.com columnist Michael Medved wants conservatives to “Call Off the ‘RINO’ Hunt“.

Medved’s argument is strictly one of numbers. Parties need more than their opponents to win, so the bigger the better. But is it really wise to make no consideration of ideology?

…Those who make war on RINO’s, however, ought to confront an obvious question: would you really prefer that such people drop the Republican designation? How does it help if politicians or office-holders with whom you disagree leave your party and join the opposition? When alleged “RINO” Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the GOP and joined the Democrats, it gave them control of the US Senate. When another RINO, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, lost his Senate seat in 2006, it also gave the Democrats control; if Chafee had won, we’d still have a Republican majority and GOP committee chairs. The truth is that no successful political party has ever been built on ideological purity. You can construct a majority coalition by bringing people into your party, not by driving them away.

The problem with this argument is that he only considers one side of the equation. He relies heavily upon two extremely rare cases where control of the Senate hinged on one seat, and in so doing missed the boat on what allowing people like Lincoln Chafee to run powerful committees usually means: conservative disillusionment in the Republican party. If the party has to compromise on all its principles just to gain one more seat, it can’t possibly hope to retain the support of its core constituency for long.

The fact of the matter is: it’s the big spending, big government Lincoln Chafee’s that made the previous election close in the first place. Obviously it would be unproductive to obsess on ideological purity to the point of paralysis, but it’s not unreasonable, and in fact it’s advantageous in the long run, to hold members accountable to the principles the party built its majority on in the first place.

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