Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

Jonathan Bernstein has a great break down of the perception by GOP pols and pundits on the effectiveness of Purity Tests and nominating extreme ideological candidates for the upcoming mid-term elections.  

The larger lesson is that politicians, and political actors, tend to interpret political events based on their own biases and interests.  Polling on health care right now is ambiguous, but conservatives are absolutely convinced that the Democratic health care reform bill is massively unpopular, while liberals are equally convinced that it's quite popular.  So conservatives interpreted the 2008 election as a repudiation not of conservatism, but as a repudiation of Congressional and presidential deviations from conservatism (in fact, the 2008 election was more of a reaction to a deep recession than anything else -- of course, that just moves the argument to whether liberal or conservative parties were responsible for the recession).  It's not impossible for pols and activists to learn useful lessons, but the evidence is that they learn slowly and inefficiently.

Bottom line: yes, it is electorally bad for parties to nominate unelectable ideological candidates.  No, Republicans aren't going to stop doing it even if it costs them seats in the 2010 election cycle.

Obviously the general idea of shoving more moderate candidates out of the landscape is a nauseating prospect to this blogger.