Oh, NRCC, You Wish You Were Like Rahm

Oh, this amused the hell out of me:

Republicans are getting inspiration on how to rebuild their party in the U.S. Congress from an unlikely source: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

California Representative Kevin McCarthy, the chief recruiter for House Republicans, said he wants his party to select candidates based less on ideology and more on their chances of winning. The goal, he said, is to seek out prospects who are ethnically diverse, female, less partisan and even supportive of abortion rights. So far, these efforts are more concept than reality. (Emphasis added)

Ya think? The fact is, even if Kevin McCarthy truly meant it, and even if there weren’t legions of movement conservatives standing in his way, there just aren’t that many “moderate” Republicans out there worth recruiting. The GOP’s vaunted discipline has produced a pipeline filled mostly with Aaron Schocks – it’s pretty hard to be a Republican up-and-comer if you deviate from party orthodoxy. And what few moderates there are know that they’d be stuck in a deep minority and subject to endless arm-twisting. Why go to Congress when you’d have to start voting (much) more right-wing than you actually are?

I don’t want to sound too triumphalist here – we will face a number of tough challenges next year. But it is the Democrats who have always had the far larger tent. It’s our main weakness but also our key strength. It’s why we have dudes representing districts like ID-01 and TX-17 and UT-02. So as I say above, the GOP simply is not set up on an institutional level to ape our approach. But anyhow, good luck trying!

(Hat-tip: reader WC)