This piece originally appeared at joshua.trevino.at.

A truly remarkable series of events has transpired in the past few days, and we are faced with a split in the online right that is both portentious -- and necessary. Before we get into the details of the division, we must step back a bit and ask why we participate in the online political sphere at all. Some few do it out of purely perverse motivations, it's true, but most do it for one of two reasons: to advance a movement, or to advance a party. These are not the same things, and each needs the other -- but it does not follow from this that they are equally important. The only Marx quote I approve of is paraphrased, “Philosophers seek to explain the world; the point is to change it.” This is well and good for motivating on-the-ground activism (in a Marxian context, with Molotov cocktails and Ninth Circuit suits), but it ignores the necessity of the explanation preceding and motivating the change. A structure is not an end alone; an apparatus that exists to promote the apparatus is worthless to all but itself; there must be content before the container becomes worth carrying. From this follows the obvious: that the Republican Party is worthwhile only inasmuch as it reflects and promotes conservative ideals, aims, and principles.

I say this is obvious, but only from a moral standpoint: from a pragmatic stance, the Party may be extremely worthwhile in its own right, as a means of personal advancement or a source of sinecures for friends and allies. Serving a structure for its own sake is the time-honored career of apparatchiks through history, and the Republican Party assuredly has its own class. Fortunately, they are easy enough to pick out: they are the ones who pirouette and leap to defend whatever line is promulgated by the ruling elements of the party at any particular moment, independent of its veracity or sense. They do the hard work of shaping the narrative at the ground level, and they hew it so that it is impervious to principled critique -- almost always with the protest that such critique merely weakens our own. The irony is that no critique weakens our own so much as their most profound absurdities, be it that Tom DeLay is worth fighting for to the bitter end, that Harriet Miers is competent to serve on the Supreme Court, that Alberto Gonzales is a fine Attorney General, or that the White House is doing a great job in Iraq. The cumulative effect of these things, and the concurrent abandonment of conservative principle in governance large and small, is why we now have a Congressional minority and a President with a 33% approval rating. The men of the party took the 1994 and 2000 victories won by the men of the movement, and squandered it all on -- well, the party. Common sense tells us that it's time to reverse the priorities and put conservatism ahead of Republicanism if we want to begin the climb back.

In this light, it is the dictates of that common sense that led RedState's Erick Erickson to “declare war” on the GOP House leadership, to keep the latter from installing corrupt solicitor of prostitutes Ken Calvert on the Appropriations committee. This is truly an act of a friend toward a friend, albeit a sort of “tough love.” Having lost their way -- and lost the Congress -- the Republican leadership desperately needs this sort of attention from the grassroots who support and elect them. Unfortunately, just as every addict has enablers, so too does the party apparatus have the men of the party to defend and sustain it in its path toward moral and electoral oblivion. True conservatives know who that Ken Calvert must not assume his place in leadership: and true conservatives know that this is merely the beginning of a long and sustained effort to reclaim the Republican Party for principle and the movement.

How do the men of the party respond? By deriding the conservatives as having adopted “the tactics and rhetoric of the Left.” That's Matt Lewis of Townhall. Hugh Hewitt's co-blogger Dean Barnett, also of Townhall, writes, “Students of the left wing blogosphere will find this message and Erick’s entire campaign strikingly similar to a Markos Moulitsas operation.” Lewis goes one better, mistaking the men of the movement for the men of the party, and declares the campaign against Calvert “a business decision.” Well. The irony is thick here, where the party men accuse the conservatives of -- being too much like leftists! Townhall claims to “arm conservatives with the tools and information necessary to have an impact in shaping the news,” but its major voices here arm the party apologists with the tools and information necessary to fight principled conservatives. What a pity -- and what a betrayal of Townhall's roots in the eminently principled Heritage Foundation.

I wrote that this is a split in the online right that is both portentious and necessary, and so it is. The conservative movement online evolved in an era when putative conservatives controlled the whole of the national government; now that they do not, that movement is slowly defining itself apart from the party that serves as its policy vehicle, and making demands that the party has not experienced before. If the “war” to deny Calvert his committee seat seems distressing to the power-holders, know that it is mere prelude: conservative demands will not end there, and the Republican Party will have to face the same trauma of adjusting to an empowered base that the Democratic Party has faced for several years now. Some party leaders will adapt, and some will resist. The latter will fall by the wayside in due time, but they need not worry overmuch: unlike the “netroots,” we won't be cruel -- and we'll be right.

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