The Mark Foley scandal is a symptom of the Republican Party’s standard operating procedure. The same pattern of behavior that lead to the current unpleasantness reared its head in the sorry episodes of Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chafee. The lesson of the Specter, Chafee, Foley stories is a conservative one: Abandoning principle for pragmatism often backfires.

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Ensuring Chafee’s and Specter’s places on their respective general election ballots were acts of political expediency that enraged true conservatives. When we griped about it we were dismissed as “purists” and “idealists,” and told that our ideological extremism and willingness to undermine the GOP’s incumbents would spell victory for Democrats.

Today it is the iron-incumbent rule—supposedly the pragmatic, prudent course—that could drive the GOP into the minority. ~Timothy Carney