My concerns:

1) Are we really able to reach the conclusion that Grenell is “unhinged” from the evidence Franck submits? I say we aren’t.

2) At the very least, shouldn’t we be a lot more cautious about how we set ourselves up as judges of this? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to acknowledge that we’re making a very personal claim here, the kind of claim you really ought to be able to justify at a slam-dunk level? (Like, maybe we should be able to point to some kind of misconduct or something before we make it?)

3) Even if conditions 1 and 2 are satisfied, wouldn’t it be prudent not to choose this particular hill to die on? If we establish the precedent that we think it’s a good idea for single-issue activists to try to veto candidates’ staff based on our judgment of their “unhingedness,” how might that be deployed against us? Would our issues end up as net winners or net losers in that scenario?

4) Accusing people of committing *future* misconduct is always out of bounds unless there’s some kind of track record of past misconduct (or you’re a precog with the Department of Precrime in a Tom Cruise sci-fi movie).

Or should that have been “the majority of Beltway (or so-called “Establishment”) Republicans” ?

The real problem IMO is that the majority of conservatives want the social conservative votes, but actively oppose social conservative policies.

From what I understand, it isn’t that this man is gay. There are lots of gay conservatives. The problem is, this man is so into his fight for SSM that it can’t be separated from who he is enough for him to be “merely” about what he was nominally hired for. He is an activist.

So his presence is a problem because Romney needs social conservative votes. The question is whether Romney has anything to offer social conservatives – or whether a vote for Romney will be a vote in favor of a GOP with no room for social conservatives in it.

But Romney is (understandably) not feeling ready to have that conversation. The time for him to be open about his opinion on the question of whether there is room for social conservatives in the GOP after he is President – not while he still needs those votes.

It’s interesting how the parties sometimes parallel themselves. Watching the GOP attack its own because the Beltway crowd wanted Romney reminded me a lot of how the Democratic Establishment attacked Hillary Democrats. Now, watching the GOP working toward ousting social conservatives reminds me a lot of what it looked like when the Democrats were working toward ousting “blue dog” and rust belt Democrats.

When will it be time to seriously oppose same-sex “marriage”? When will fiscal and foreign policy Republicans admit that “the truce” is really a surrender?