Paul takeover complete

So now that the chairman and vice chairman of the Clark County Republican Party have quit to join the establishment “Team Nevada,” can we officially classify the Nevada GOP as a bona fide third party?

Poor state Chairman Michael McDonald is virtually the only non-Ron Paul supporter left in the state Republican hierarchy, gamely trying to keep the factions together so as to support the party’s central mission: registering Republicans, getting them to the polls and electing GOP candidates.

But as now ex-Clark County GOP Chairman David Gibbs and Vice Chairman Woody Stroupe will tell you, the new Republican Party in the Silver State doesn’t just want to elect Republicans. It wants to elect the right Republicans. Pun totally intended.

“People are waking up,” says Cindy Lake, who was voted interim chairwoman after Gibbs left. “You don’t have to go along to get along.”

Indeed, what does it profit a party, though it gain the Senate and White House, but lose its soul? It’s a question Paul supporters have been asking for decades, since before their man ran for president for the first time in 1988 as the standard-bearer of the Libertarian Party. If you elect Republicans who compromise conservative fiscal principles, government still grows, albeit at a slower rate. And that’s not something Paul Republicans will tolerate any longer.

“We’re hoping that they will get the message that they’re our elected officials and we’re going to hold them accountable,” Lake says. “We want to re-establish the Republican brand and have it mean something.”

That sentiment might give elected Republicans in Nevada some pause. U.S. Sen. Dean Heller describes himself as a “small-government, low-tax, reasonable-regulation conservative.” Rep. Joe Heck is by no means a liberal. And Gov. Brian Sandoval, despite his embrace of extending taxes that were supposed to be temporary, is nobody’s progressive.

But will the Paul Republicans see a difference between electing Heller or Rep. Shelley Berkley? Between Heck or Assembly Speaker John Oceguera? Would any of these people have voted against going to war in Iraq? Would they vote to bring all troops home now, and eschew future wars? Would any of them vote to end the Federal Reserve system or radically change current fiscal policy? Would any support legalizing marijuana, or ending the war on drugs?

It’s totally understandable why Paul people look scornfully at modern politics the way the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise looks at the virtual, computer-run war between the Eminiarians and the Vendikarians in the classic Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon.” Computers launched attacks and calculated the numbers of the dead, and “casualties” would dutifully report to disintegration chambers to die in a bloodless, destruction-free conflict.

Well, Paul’s followers are not walking into the disintegration chambers any more. They’ve taken over for real, and are using the party’s machinery to wage actual war, not just on the Democrats, but also on fellow Republicans who are not committed to the principles of fiscal conservatism as defined by Paul and his backers. It’s an ironic turnaround for the Paul types, who for years have been considered the outsiders but are now running things.

Meanwhile, mainstream Republicans look at the Paul people the way regular folk regard attendees at a Star Trek convention: Obsessed with a fictional world, unable to relate to the wider reality. That’s why Team Nevada has been created, as an alternative to a state and county GOP run for the first time by people outside the establishment.

“We’re the Republican Party,” Lake insists. “Team Nevada is a six-month operation.”

But it’s a necessary one for mainstream Republicans who value winning races more highly than faithfulness to principle. Which makes Nevada’s newly conquered Republican Party its most recent third party.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.