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Matt Yglesias:

Ever since I read it, I’ve been fascinated by the line in National Review’s endorsement of Mitt Romney which said “Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate.”

I wouldn’t deny that progressives are prone to a certain amount of tribalism in our internal deliberations, but that kind of explicit ideological maximalism closes off debates on the merits in a weird kind of way. And not only do you see much more ideological maximalism in conservative media, but conservative media is a much more influential force than progressive media. This makes it extremely difficult for arguments on the merits to get off the ground which, in turn, makes it hard to mount persuasive arguments against candidates who you think may be wrong on the merits.

That’s true. Liberals have both a strong progressive wing and a more centrist neoliberal/third-way wing. And these two wings fight a lot because they don’t really like each other very much. But in the end, they’re both genuinely influential. They really do act as countervailing forces to each other within the halls of the Democratic Party.

But Republicans? There’s the tea party wing and that’s about it. Sure, you’ve still got a few Bruce Bartletts, Ross Douthats, and David Frums roaming around, but they’ve basically been excommunicated from the party. For the moment anyway, they have no influence at all. Ditto for the old guard from the George H.W. Bush era, who mostly just keep quiet these days.

Anyway, there’s nothing original here. But it’s still worth repeating once in a while. The Republican Party and the Tea Party are pretty much one and the same now.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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