Purity politics, Democrat-style

[FBaggins]

13. Those aren't the reasons that the tea party hurts the republicans

It isn't that they are racist/sexist/homophobic/extemist... it's that they are more "racist/sexist/homophobic/extemist" than the rest of the party. They are much farther to the right than the RNC as a whole (and thus way to the right of the voting public)... and (foolishly) insist that candidates who do not meet all of their requirements are functionally no different than the democrats who meet none of their requirements.

Since the primary electorate for the RNC is also well to the right of the party as a whole, this means that they can often win primaries in places where that same candidate would have little chance of winning the general election... and thus (as in 2012), they lose a number of races that they otherwise would have won. (while proclaiming that it doesn't matter because there was no difference between the republican who could have won and the democrat who did win).

Our growing "coffee party" (tm) is exactly like that in reverse. They seem to honestly be incapable of distinguising between a candidate who agrees with us 75% of the time (but not on a handful of key issues) and someone that disagrees with us 100% of the time. It's irrelevant to them that an ACLU score of 75% can win in a give race but 100% cannot possibly.