Hugh Hewitt is clearly an intelligent man, but he sometimes comes across as if he thinks he’s the lone pragmatist on the Right. From his book If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat to his post today taking issue with NRO’s Terence Jeffrey’s dislike of Rudy Giulani’s social liberalism, Hewitt has continually expressed his exasperation with ideologue conservatives who hold Republican candidates to unrealistically pure conservative standards:

"This answer is an ominous one for the GOP. Tancredo is not a serious candidate, but Jeffrey is a serious opinion-leader on the right. Jeffrey's willingness to publicly bless a protest candidate signals that many on the right would rather fight doomed battles than get to the business of electing a nominee who can be elected president. The irony is that in our conversation Jeffrey points to the importance of the Supreme Court's likely vacancies in his critique of Rudy, but then in effect endorses the sort of fecklessness in politics that almost guarantees that Hillary gets the SCOTUS appointments from January, 2009 to October, 2012.

It is one thing to be undecided among the Big Three, and even acceptable to still indulge wishful thinking about the entry into the race of candidates for whom time has already run out.

But encouraging the sort of destructive crusade that Congressman Tancredo wants to lead should be labelled exactly what it is: The triumph of posture over purpose."

Hewitt’s main point (that Rudy is preferable to any Dem) is inarguable, but he takes it too far, allows an exception for himself, neglects the important impact that voting for a seemingly unelectable candidate can have on the party and other candidates, and greatly overstates the danger to Republicans of not uniting behind an anointed mainstream “electable” candidate. What is the real danger here? That Tancredo getting 5% - 10% in various primaries will rob Rudy or McCain of enough momentum that Hillary will beat him at the wire? I have never seen any evidence that primary opposition hurts a candidate, or that an easy road to the nomination helps one.

Fighting a “doomed battle” for Tancredo in the primaries is not at all the same as fighting for Hillary in the general election. Tancredo supporters are no more endangering the GOP’s chance of ultimately capturing the White House than Rudy supporters are endangering McCain’s chances (or vice versa); nor is such the main intent of any primary voter / supporter.

Hewitt’s explanation of how Chaffee’s circumstances were different has stuck with me – not because it’s a sign of hypocrisy or anything like that, but because it was true and well-expressed (“Jim Jeffords proved that closely divided senates are governed by the most erratic person in the majority.”) Good point. So Hewitt allows himself some commonsense latitude from blindly having to obey Hewitt’s Law of always supporting even the worst GOP candidate over even the best Dem. And I won’t quibble with him there. I only wish he’d return the favor and allow some of the rest of us a little leeway for making our own exceptions to his law.

Did Democrats who wasted time boosting Dean and even Kucinich have no effect on the 2004 race, the party, and the eventual nominee? Or did they have a negative (from a Dem POV) effect? I don’t think so. Enthusiastic support for hard-core leftist candidates helped them pull their party and John Kerry the way they wanted them to go (and thus ultimately the country, as Bush was able to sidle left toward the middle in response to Kerry shifting left due to the tugging of the Kucinichites).

The right needs to learn to stand up for what it believes in the way the left does. This is one instance where maintaining a doctrinaire purist approach actually has positive practical benefits as well. Whereas meekly uniting behind the supposedly most-electable candidates only gives a party Bob Dole or Al Gore.