“I need some new Republicans, people who believe in constitutional government, a balanced budget and liberty,” DeMint said. “I’m out across the country recruiting new Republicans who I think if they get here will not only challenge the institutions of government but be willing to even challenge the Republican Party and our leadership if they feel like we’re going in the wrong direction.”
“I think just a handful of new Republicans in the Senate could help change the direction,” he said.
DeMint said he intends to go outside the party structure because he is “no longer going to go along with this idea that we are going to keep spending and borrowing and taking over and raising taxes.”
“I’m going to do everything I can to change things,” he said. “We need to rebuild our party with the constitutional concepts and we need to restore faith with the American people.”
You can get a sense of what DeMint thinks a real Republican is from his ratings on his Senate Conservatives Fund website, and how much it looks like a DeMint cult of personality, Ayn Randian in its insistence on absolute purity of ideas.
DeMint alone has a 100% rating under his own notion of ideological purity, based on the Senate's composition and voting record in 2008. Ten senators radiate out from him. Closest in is Kyl of Arizona (who complained he didn't see a need for maternity care in the health care bill because it was of no use to him) and Barasso of Wyoming (one of the right wing collection of doctors who don't believe much of the country deserves treatment except as an act of charity by someone else). Both rate at 98%.
Next in the circles sitting at DeMint's feet: Enzi of Wyoming, Inhofe and Coburn of Oklahoma and Ensign of Nevada, all at 96%. Apparently Ensign has gotten docked a couple of point for infidelity and nepotism.
Allard of Colorado sits further back at 94%; Sessions of Alabama and Vitter of Louisiana (more demerits for consorting with whores?), complete the purity of the inner circle at 91%. Bunning sits in the dunce's corner, hanging on at 90%.
DeMint's purity scale is more like the Richter scale in that it proceeds in order of magnitude downward and away from the center of the conservative universe His colleague, Lindsey Graham, ranks 84% and is under fire for being a socialist practically. Cornyn of Texas, who heads the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, gets an 82% and DeMint has backed several non-NRSCC picks, including in Texas.
Richard Burr, who believes in bank runs (in the meltdown last year he sent his wife to clean out their ATM) gets an 89% rating. Judd Gregg's at 85%, and the reactionary Sam Brownback clings to the second table at 81%. Idaho's Crapo- 83%.
It's hard to see the value of using such data- other than that DeMint is the only senator to get 100% on the criteria he presumably selected, but also because thirteen Senate seats have changed hands since the beginning of this year.
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