"Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican."
This so-called "11th Commandment" was created during the 1966 Gubernatorial campaign of Ronald Reagan. Then California Republican Party Chairman Gaylord Parkinson came up with the idea as Republicans around the country had just watched GOP Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater lose his race after prolonged, vicious attacks from the left within the Republican Party.
How ironic that over the years, this mantra has become something used by liberal Republicans, interested in fending off criticism from conservatives in the Grand Old Party.
Last weekend, United States Senator and Presidential aspirant John McCain invoked Reagan’s "11th Commandment" in a stinging criticism of the Club for Growth (CfG). For those who are not familiar with CfG, they are not a "Republican" organization, but rather a grassroots-based, non-partisan group that is focused on economic issues and whose membership often times focuses funds to help elect candidates for office who will fight to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. In recent years, CfG has focused their efforts not only in general elections, but has also targeted liberals in the U.S. Senate and Congress (whether in the Democrat or Republican Party) for defeat in primaries.
John McCain lashed out at the CfG, accusing them of being responsible for Republicans losing control of the U.S. Senate. (See the video.) I have never heard a more baseless and, frankly, ignorant accusation hurled from a Republican Presidential aspirant.
Last year, members of the CfG joined in a coalition of conservatives around the country to help finance a spirited primary challenge to liberal U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee (who happened to be a registered Republican). The premise was that with Republicans controlling the White House, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, and still being unable to get meaningful legislation to the President’s desk (such as making the President’s tax cuts permanent, one of many pro-growth policies opposed by the useless Chafee) — we needed to make a change in the makeup of the Republican caucus in the upper house. Chafee was ultimately able to stave off the primary challenge, but not after the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, under the leadership of Senator Elizabeth Dole, dumped MILLIONS into saving Chafee’s non-deserving skin. Chafee went on to lose by a healthy margin that November — and this is the factor on which McCain bases his ignorant statement.
Perhaps instead of being critical of conservatives for wanting to ‘clean house’ of a turncoat GOPer who stood against so much of what our Party was trying to achieve with our majority, McCain should aim his ire at Senator Dole, and to the millions that she directed into defending McCain’s disloyal colleague (yes, when you vote against the principles in your party platform enough, you actually become a disloyal Republican). There is no doubt that if those millions had been available to Senator Allen of Virginia, or some of the others who lost by a narrow margin, Republicans would still control the Senate.
The reality is that Republicans never had a functional majority in the United States Senate because too many GOPers in the upper house were unwilling to place on the President’s desk very real and meaningful tax cuts and spending cuts, which had been passed by the House of Representatives.
If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he would be the first one to be critical of his so-called "11th Commandment" being used to defend elected Republicans who so flagrantly oppose major public policy goals of their own Party.
The Republican Party needs to focus less on protecting incumbents ‘at all costs’ and instead focus on protecting our platform, and securing and ability to ensure that, with a majority, we can actual take the vision in the platform and turn it into public policy victories.
The Club for Growth, which is an emergent force in national politics, is one of the most significant, positive forces in the battle against a massively growing federal bureaucracy.
It is telling that Senator McCain said Sunday that he can think of nothing he has in common with the group. I think I may agree.
UPDATE: McCain could be irked about this white paper from CfG on his record on fiscal issues.
UPDATE: The Club for Growth prepared this video "response" to McCain, worth a watch:
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