Wednesday, April 16, 2014

That Won’t Teach Them

Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens would like the Republicans to nominate Rand Paul so they can get the crap kicked out of them.

This man wants to be the Republican nominee for president.
And so he should be. Because maybe what the GOP needs is another humbling landslide defeat. When moderation on a subject like immigration is ideologically disqualifying, but bark-at-the-moon lunacy about Halliburton is not, then the party has worse problems than merely its choice of nominee.

The problem with that plan is that the majority of the GOP would not see it as a life lesson but yet another reason to move further to the right: to them, none of the candidates in the last twenty years have been conservative enough.  Even Ronald Reagan wouldn’t pass their current requirements of hard-core wingnutsery.

The lesson would be lost on them.