“…Ronald Reagan became famous for his “Eleventh Commandment” (“Thou shalt not speak ill of your fellow Republican”) and his career demonstrated a consistent determination to work closely with moderates and even liberals in his own party. Unlike some of the bitter little men who claim to be his heirs, the Gipper never railed against “RINO’s” (“Republicans In Name Only) or tried to purge anyone from his party. He frequently repeated the self-evident assertion that “someone who agrees with me 70% of the time doesn’t count as my enemy.” Reagan would have been appalled at the recent, publicly announced, utterly self-destructive desire among some conservatives to “knock off” the moderate-to-liberal Republican Senator from Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee. When purists got their wish, and Chafee went down to defeat to liberal Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, that race served to turn over the Senate (with all its crucial committee chairmanships) to the Dems. Had Republicans managed to unite (as most did, finally, at the end of the campaign) to re-elect either Chafee (or else saved Mike DeWine of Ohio, another endangered so-called “RINO”), they could have maintained control of the Senate...”