Jayne: Herrera Beutler smashes a lob out of reach to local GOP

It was like a tennis match. A hopelessly one-sided tennis match, with Jaime Herrera Beutler playing the role of Serena Williams and the Clark County Republican Party looking like a weekend recreational player.

Not that the Republican Congresswoman should have even been in this contest to begin with. But when the local GOP served up an amateurish lob, well, she was compelled to smash it out of reach.

Consider Herrera Beutler’s retort when threatened with censure by her own party: “A movement can’t grow if it is more concerned with burning heretics than winning converts,” she wrote in a letter. The conservative representative had been accused of, well, not being conservative enough, and her response was a 140 mph smash that the local GOP couldn’t even see whiz past. Then again, they often are blinded by their own intransigence.

Keep in mind, this is a group that in 2013 chastised Herrera Beutler after she correctly criticized Congressional Republicans for shutting down the federal government. Keep in mind, this is a group that currently is firing spitballs at Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey — another Republican — for his actions leading up to the vote on the county charter. Apparently not content to support members of their party who easily win elections, the Clark County crusaders embark on missions to burn the heretics.

Look at the complaints the local GOP lobbed toward Herrera Beutler. “Please understand, we receive no satisfaction from disciplining one of our own,” read the letter the party sent to her. “However, silence is acceptance, and we cannot accept your poor voting record; therefore, we cannot remain silent. We hope this will cause you to reflect upon your actions . . .” All that was missing was a threat to send her to her room without dinner.

The complaints, however, smack of demagoguery rather than debate. Of recalcitrance rather than reason.

As Herrera Beutler noted in her retort, she has an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association and has a pro-life voting record. As she also noted, of her 11 votes that drew challenges from the local GOP, she sided with the majority of the House Republican Conference on five of them. “What are the motives of a county Republican leadership that wants to censure a Republican representative for voting with the Republican Conference?” she asked.

Choose your battles

Motives, indeed. Perhaps more important, what is the history?

A couple of years ago, you see, a staunchly conservative faction took control of the local party. Following in the steps of the national Tea Party movement, local adherents pounded the pavement and won a majority of the Committee Precinct Officer positions. Nothing wrong with that; starting at the grassroots level is how you build a movement. But considering that the local GOP then produced a platform that advocated the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service, and considering that its most notable actions have been picking fights with elected members from its own party, the derp has overwhelmed whatever good ideas they might have.

The wisdom of such actions is easy to question. For example, the local party challenged Herrera Beutler in last year’s primary, with Michael Delavar running to the right of the Congresswoman on the political spectrum; he received 13 percent of the vote. For another example, Kimsey, the other Republican who apparently isn’t Republican enough, is so popular that he has not drawn a challenger from either party in the past three elections.

In other words, the Clark County Republican Party is lousy at choosing its battles. Rather than adding to the political discussion, they appear to be mired in narcissism and arrogance, and in the process they make their party appear fractured. Attempting to win converts might be a better strategy.

Instead, they picked an absurd fight with a Congresswoman who was just re-elected with 62 percent of the vote. Game, set, match, Jaime Herrera Beutler.