If we've learned anything in the last couple of years, it's that the costs of political looniness are limited and localized. The Republican Party has galloped to the right, with some of its most visible spokespeople being ... well, let's just say not a group of wise and reasonable statesmen. Yet they certainly didn't suffer much for it at the polls in November. Yes, some of their craziest candidates lost, but the extremism of people like Sharron Angle did little to impede the GOP wave.
And at the moment, the party seems to be casting about for new ways to find those within its ranks insufficiently doctrinaire. The contenders to chair the RNC had to sit down yesterday for a debate, in which they were asked questions about just how much they deplore the prospect of gay people being allowed to marry, and what their favorite book is.
Call me crazy, but if I were a Republican, my concern about prospective RNC chairs wouldn't be what their favorite books are or even what they believe in their heart of hearts about policy. My question would be which of them is most capable of getting Republicans elected. Because after all, that's the person's job. He or she needs to raise money, help local party organizations grow, strategically manage the national party's resources, and so on. The depth of their commitment to today's hard-edged conservatism, much less the emotional roots of their philosophy of life, wouldn't seem to be particularly relevant.
Even so, the party chair only matters at the margins when you're talking about the national picture. After all, the current RNC chair, Michael Steele, is considered by pretty much everyone to be an incompetent buffoon, and that didn't make much of a difference in the 2010 election. But in a year when every race counts, it helps if the party chair is good at the job.
Myself, I'm hoping Steele gets the nod, so we can get two more years of this:
He's just heeding the call, butterball!
-- Paul Waldman