GOP columnist slams Limbaugh, Hannity for destroying Republican party

"Tell us, why, again, Republicans need 55 senators?" Rush Limbaugh asked not long ago. "Why do we need 55 senators when we have so many malcontents and traitors in the bunch? And they all happen to be from the Northeast, and they all happen to be moderates, they all happen to be liberals."

In that spirit, the National Federation of Republican Assemblies set out to rid the party of this threat. It set up a "RINO Hunters Club" to "root out and hunt down" the squishy centrists who are Republicans in Name Only. The Club for Growth ran candidates to defeat them. Last week on his radio show, Sean Hannity blasted the RINO’s again, saying they were costing good conservatives their jobs....

Why have 55 Republican senators? Why not 25? Why not 15 brave and true? Throw in a few dozen pure-minded Republican House members and you could hold the next Republican convention in a living room.

For the past several years, Republican elites have treated the moderates, upon whom their majority depended, as the deformed cousins of their movement. Congressmen from rock-ribbed Republican districts who’ve never had to confront a dissenting view applaud themselves for their manly courage while scorning the effete wispiness of Northeastern Republicans who go home and battle derision every weekend....

The central fight in American politics now is over where the line is demarking the two zones, and the central Republican problem is that every time the party mobilizes its exurban base it further alienates the marginal voters in traditional suburbs where Congressional elections are won or lost....

So there goes your majority. In the years ahead, Republicans can either reintroduce themselves to the blue-state suburbs or they can ask themselves the dittohead question: Tell us, why, again, do we need to be a governing party anyway? NYTimes via AMERICAblog