Karl Rove, New RINO Bogeyman

Over the last week the right side of the political blogosphere and twitterverse has exploded with outrage at Karl Rove, former Bush campaign chief and policy adviser  Anyone familiar with online punditry knows how good the right is at attacking their own, but the venom spewed at Rove this time has been unprecedented.

Breitbart - The Civil War Has Begun Twitchy - Karl Rove launches attempt to silence Tea Party influence; conservatives fire back Michelle Malkin - Kneel before Zod! GOP control freak Karl Rove launches new effort to snuff out Tea Party

Reading these stories might lead you to believe Rove had switched party affiliation and viewed to elect purely Democrats from now on. Online outrage is almost never even remotely tethered to reality, so let's see just what Rove is planning and why it's so putatively evil.

New York Times - Top Donors to Republicans Seek More Say in Senate Races 

“There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” said Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads, the “super PAC” creating the new project. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.”

So...he wants to elect candidates who can win? What a monster! I suppose even the father of the modern conservative movement, William F Buckley, whose electoral philosophy is cited as the philosophical mold by the backers of the new Conservative Victory Fund, would be called a spineless "RINO" today.

Buckley: "The wisest choice would be the one who would win. No sense running Mona Lisa in a beauty contest. I'd be for the most right, viable candidate who could win. If you could convince me that Barry Goldwater could win, I'd vote for him."

In case it wasn't abundantly clear, there is a small, vocal minority on the right who feel it isn't worth winning unless we do so with a 100% ideologically pure candidate. There are many problems with this "strategy", of course, not the least of which is there isn't even agreement on the right about what exactly makes someone sufficiently conservative.

Democrats don't give a damn about ideological purity in their candidates, only victory, and with the exception of 2010, they've made huge gains in every election since 2005 because of it. So how about instead of making sure we choose perfect candidates, we choose good candidates who can win, and leave our rhetorical blitzkriegs for the OTHER side?