By Dr. Pepper of the Daily Pepper
Gearing up for a heated fight over Samuel Alito, conservative Republicans appear to be launching an attack on "soft" Republicans in the Senate. Because many of these Senators hail from New England, ultra-conservative voices in the party are endeavoring to marginalize them, suggesting that they are not true Republicans at all, that they are "Rhinos" (Republicans in Name Only). And they have given prominence to the term "New England Republican," a term whose resonance owes much to the literal fact that, as even a first-grader should know, New England is not in Middle America. Patrick Toomey, President of the Club for Growth, opined to an NPR reporter recently, for instance, that New England Republicans have a "disproportionate power": "Especially in the Senate, where you need 60 votes to get anything done, it gives the moderate wing quite a lot of leverage, which is kind of ironic, since they represent kind of a narrow wing of the Republican Party." Toomey, who almost defeated Arlen Specter in the 2004 GOP primary race (49% to 51%), has endorsed right-wingers like Steve Laffey against Republican incumbent Senators like Lincoln Chaffee (RI). You have to wonder whether Toomey is just stupid (because he is characterizing Republicans from New England as a certain "type" while also hoping to elect an authentic right-winger from there) or whether there's something else going on here, something that cuts deeper into American assumptions about political alignments.
