Who Are You Calling "Extremist"?

Michelle Malkin at Townhall.com opined in "Who Are You Calling "Extremist"?" :

Here is one of the loudest messages of the 2009 off-off-year elections: Conservatives in America will no longer let their opponents define them as outside of the mainstream. They will not submit to Democrats. Or to the media. Or to Beltway Republican capitulationists. They will not "rebrand." They will not sit down. They will not shut up.

Democratic Rep. Jim Moran attacked the Republican candidates.. in his state of Virginia as the "Taliban ticket." ... NYT columnist Frank Rich decried the right's "Jacobins" and "Stalinists" who he said joined a "putsch" by supporting Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman instead of ACORN-embracing, Big Labor-promoting, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, tax-and-spend Republican Dede Scozzafava in New York's 23rd congressional special election."
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But conservatives are not demanding "purity." They are simply abiding by Reagan's own wise counsel in 1975: "A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers."

The Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee threw upward of $900,000 down the toilet for a candidate whose core views and political alliances undermined conservatism's fundamental beliefs in limited government from Day One. It was a reckless expenditure of the GOP base's hard-earned money and a bitter tuition bill for a teachable moment on the perils of political expediency.

The days when immoderate political operatives and feckless Beltway opportunists could define "moderation" by their own warped yardsticks without pushback are over.

Read the whole Article here ...