A brawl the GOP needs

WASHINGTON POST, 11/20/2009 by David S. Broder (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler - For Sarah Palin, with her personality and history, to tell Rush Limbaugh that Republicans should welcome primary fights within their own ranks is hardly surprising. As much as it may pain her many critics, she also has a lot of history on her side. ∴ Many Republicans, looking at the recent fiasco in New York's 23rd Congressional District, argue that the endorsement by Palin and her talk-radio buddies of a rigid right-winger running on the Conservative Party ticket cost Republicans a House seat they had held for more than a century. They worry that the populist anti-establishment "rogues" like Palin will kill GOP prospects for a comeback in 2010 by backing ideologues in many other primaries and scaring off independents and moderate Republicans. ∴ They are wasting their breath on Palin, who got to be governor of Alaska by knocking off incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in a Republican primary in 2006. When she told Limbaugh, "What I appreciate about the Republican Party [is] we have contested, aggressive, competitive primaries," she had that fight in mind. Read more at the Washington Post...