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 In the last election candidates McCain and Palin put new popularity into the term 'maverick', hoping to utilize the term to distance themselves sufficiently from the outgoing president and pick up moderate votes. Today, these two 'mavericks' are rated at 5% for McCain and 1% for Palin as leaders of the party. ( http://www.politico.com/new... ).

That puts both of them in striking distance from Rush Limbaugh's 2% support.

It makes one think, in light of the recent defection of Arlen Specter, senior senator from Pennsylvania, about the role of mavericks within the party. Specter, it is said, left the Republican party because of his belief, apparently well-founded, that he was being given the boot because of his 'Liberal voting" record. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POL... ).

So: whether one calls them mavericks or RINOs (Republicans in Name Only, the term favored by the party's ideological purists), what is the status of such folks in today's Republican Party?

Take this exerpt as a starting point: 

""The continued distrust of government, however, has reduced the size and scope of public life.  Democracy has become so balky that the normal processes of representative government are being replaced by systems of issue brokering that are only quasi-representative.  In Austin, public policy is often negotiated among interest groups, with government only ratifying decisions behind the scenes."

It shrinks the power of the individual to influence government, and increases the reliance on what Bill Bishop calls "tribes".

Most alarming, for instance, is the "tribe" that brought Palin to the front of the line for VP...when there were so many more mainstream, and more qualified options.  (I believe that I have heard the name Olympia Snow bandied about).

Here's another excerpt from the book to let you know what happens to REAL mavericks in the Republican party:

"Hey Sheila, it's time for you to become a true independent."  With that, Minnesota senate minority leader Dick Day told state senator Sheila Kiscaden that she would have to vacate her office, the one she had shared for twelve years with other Republican state senators.  Day called a sergent at arms, and Kiscaden was escorted out of her office and out of the Republican Party."

In other words, they get RINO hunted.  Sheila ran as a fiscal conservative in 1992...but she wasn't socially conservative enough, and didn't kiss the NRA's a** enough.

So...

"In 2002, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and a conservative education organization jammed the local nominating caucus in Rochester.  "I went to the endorsing convention, and the gun guys were out," Kiscaden recalled.  "Some came up and said, "We gotcha.  We've got rid of you."

Fortunatly, she ran as an independant and won in 2002...and caucused with the Republicans until the day she was thrown out of the office...and told that the Republicans would spend $200,000 to beat her if she ran again." (http://www.anomalousdata.co...

The fact that there are special interest groups targeting elected officials for removal from office is not the distinguishing feature of this story. This is the nature of modern politics. The difference here is the interesting phenomenon of a party in decline going against its last best effort at maintaining national power, i.e., celebrating independence of thought. The Minnesota case was the NRA using its substantial political clout against a Republican, but in concert with the state's party leadership.

There are other examples. After President Obama's Stimulus Bill got voted into law, three Republican mavericks, Susan Collins (ME), Olympia Snowe (ME) and Arlen Specter (PA), got singled out for targetting. http://www.rinosafari.com/2...

Snowe responded to the attacks this way: 

 "It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of “Survivor” — you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party...

I have said that, without question, we cannot prevail as a party without conservatives. But it is equally certain we cannot prevail in the future without moderates...

There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”

I couldn’t agree more. We can’t continue to fold our philosophical tent into an umbrella under which only a select few are worthy to stand. Rather, we should view an expansion of diversity within the party as a triumph that will broaden our appeal. That is the political road map we must follow to victory." 

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009...

The question is this: the choice by party leadership to clean house is a decision that is ultimately up to them.   It is widely believed that decision will fare poorly in the next election, but nonetheless one feels disinclined to argue with bald ideology. As a strategy, however, one has to wonder what they are thinking, and how they think this might work.

Currently, the mavericks in the party are being kicked out to oblivion, or if they have enough gravitas all on their own (as is clearly the case with Specter) they will look for a safer location: the Democrats.