Attack of the RINOs

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

Cornyn recruiting RINOs

 

An important story from Josh Kraushaar:

 

For many Republicans, including Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, the reaction to Sen. Arlen Specter’s party switch was unequivocal: good riddance.

 

Yet even as his jilted former party slams the door behind him, the GOP is quietly pursuing a 2010 strategy that relies heavily on candidates nearly identical to Specter. The party’s road to winning back a Senate majority, it seems, is paved with moderates whose records are sure to make conservatives blanch.

 

For the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s recruitment list for 2010 reads like a roster of some of the party’s best-known RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) and squishes — the derisive terms applied to centrists by movement conservatives.

 

The party’s top choice for Florida’s open Senate seat is popular Gov. Charlie Crist, who raised eyebrows earlier this year with his vigorous advocacy of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package — he even went so far as to appear with Obama at a Florida rally in February. In Connecticut, the national GOP has lobbied former Rep. Rob Simmons — who holds a higher lifetime rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action group than Specter does — to challenge Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd.

 

In Delaware, where there is widespread consensus that just one Republican — Rep. Michael Castle, the co-founder of the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership — can win Joe Biden’s former seat, the push is on to get him to announce for the Senate. Castle, one of three Republicans who voted for all six bills on the Democrats’ “100 hour” agenda in 2007, was the only Republican standing alongside Obama when he signed an executive order in March allowing federal funds for stem cell research.

 

In the Midwest, there’s Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk, another leading centrist viewed as the GOP’s best hope of capturing a blue-state Senate seat — the one Obama vacated after he was elected president.

 

On the West Coast, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texas is hoping to land self-proclaimed moderate businesswoman Carly Fiorina to run against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in a state that gave Obama 61 percent of the vote.

Cornyn recruiting RINOs

 

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/050...Os.html?showall