1) What does the new class of RINOs really want?

Re-election. Convinced that the Republic cannot survive without their services, they will say and do anything to get elected.

2) That’s not entirely fair. For instance, Chuck Hagel has been a consistent and annoying critic of the war since almost day one.

True. But you specifically asked about the new class of RINOs. Let’s call them the 11/7 Republicans. After the election results came pouring in, these Republicans took a hard look at Iraq and decided that it was a quagmire. The ones who are up for election in 2008 were especially likely to reach that conclusion. They realized that Iraq was not only a quagmire, but one that had to be drained before their reelection campaigns began in earnest.

3) Do quagmires get drained? Never mind. You always mix metaphors when you’re angry. Anyway, aren’t politicians allowed to change their minds? You’re always defending Mitt Romney’s right to evolve, aren’t you?

The point with Romney is determining what he stands for and what he will do. It’s also about determining whether or not he can be relied upon to follow through on his campaign promises. For instance, Democrats always run on middle class tax relief and then realize after taking office that budget realities make delivering such relief an impossibility.

With the 11/7 Republicans, what’s going on here is completely craven. As a class, they universally pronounced failure as not an option in Iraq. Now that they’ve stuck their fingers in the wind, they don’t care whether we succeed or fail. All they care about is that the issue vanish before it harms their reelection campaigns.

4) But some people have in good faith decided that the Iraq war has failed and the time has come to cut our losses, no?

I haven’t heard any Republicans say we lost. Markos Moulitsas says we lost – he said it a couple of days ago. But even mainstream Democrats shy away from so eagerly embracing defeat.

5) So you’re arguing that the 11/7 Republicans should say we’ve lost and that it’s therefore time to beat a manly retreat?

I’m saying they should rest on their principles, assuming they have any. If that’s what they believe, they should say so. But I am extremely suspect of any Republicans who say their view on Iraq has changed over the past 70 days because of facts on the ground. The UN report that came out yesterday merely reported the same old/same old, albeit with a 10% decline in Iraqi deaths.

6) So whatever could have caused the epiphany for these erstwhile war supporters?

The electoral disaster that was 11/7. More than anything else, they want to box 11/7 in to 2006, and make sure there’s no repeat of it in 2008.

7) So what’s wrong with that?

The moral turpitude of potentially sacrificing millions of lives to preserve one’s Senate seat is I think rather obvious. But then there’s also the political obtuseness of the play. The Republicans didn’t get creamed in 2006 for getting us into a war. We got creamed because we didn’t win the war we got into. Regardless of how hard the 11/7 Republicans try to distance themselves from Iraq, it won’t work. This is America, and we don’t like losing. The authors of a defeat are seldom rewarded with electoral success, even if they seek to abandon the game halfway through.

8) So beyond being true to their hearts, what should the 11/7 Republican do?

First of all, being true to their hearts would likely be a disaster, since their hearts’ greatest desire seems to be reelection at any and all costs.

What they should do is take a refresher course on why the Iraq war is so important. They should also get themselves up to speed on the context of the Iraq war, to wit that it is but one battle in the long war against Radical Islam.

9) Don’t they already know this stuff?

Who’s to say? I’m still haunted by my conference calls with the congressmen who wanted to lead the Republican caucus. Remember those guys (and gal)? Not a single one of them could name a book he had read on radical Islam or terrorism or any other related subject.

10) But one of them said he spoke with Frank Gaffney and arranged a private viewing of “Obsession.” Don’t those things count?

No. Given that these guys are so intellectually incurious that they haven’t picked up a single book on the subject in the five years that we’ve been involved in an existential struggle, I really question how much headway Gaffney was able to make. Besides, if Gaffney made a lot of progress up on the Hill, I don’t think you’d see these ghastly 11/7 Republicans rising from the Capitol’s swamps.

11) What will the 11/7 Republicans do to the party?

Rip it apart. No two ways about it. I wouldn’t even think of voting for a Republican who didn’t support the war against Radical Islam. I think most Republicans feel the same way.

But the party leadership probably doesn’t. The party leadership, after all, supported Lincoln Chafee. So the bar has been set very low for the 11/7 Republicans to earn national party support. If the national Republican apparatus supports candidates who disgust its most loyal supporters, 2008 will make 2006 look like the good old days as far as the GOP is concerned.

12) It sounds like you’re being pretty strident there, outlining the Barnett Ideological Purity test. The audacity! What gives you the right?

To paraphrase Harry Truman, I’m just giving you the truth and you think it’s hell. Maybe I’m wrong, and Republicans will eagerly support a national slate of Chafees and I’ll be a lonely, cranky voice in the wilderness. But I doubt it.

We can be a big tent party on a lot of issues. There’s room for differences on almost everything. But a minimum requirement is that every Republican candidate for office be serious about the war. That doesn’t mean we all have to agree. Even the woefully misguided paleocons can have a seat at the table. But politicians so fundamentally unserious about the most pressing issue of the day that they’ll do a 180 on it to bolster their political fortunes aren’t worth supporting.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.