Conservative Tea Party pragmatists of the world, unite! -- By Philip Klein, The Washington Examiner

Politics abhors complexity. As a result, recent reports of a “civil war” on the Right over the Republican budget and health care strategies are often framed as moderates versus conservatives, or as pitting the Tea Party against the old GOP establishment.

These sorts of designations serve the purposes of most people entangled in politics. The descriptors are comfortable shorthand for reporters and cable news producers, as well as various political factions.

Democrats like to portray Republicans as being taken over by a group of extremists. Establishment Republicans want to portray their opponents within the party as unreasonable, while Tea Party supporters want to portray all conservatives who disagree with their take-no-prisoners approach as sellouts to the Washington political establishment.

But this made-for-TV spectacle doesn’t recognize another group on the Right. It’s the subset of conservatives who agree with the Tea Party that Republicans should be more faithful to the principles of constitutionally limited government, but who also believe that Tea Party groups often employ counterproductive methods.

Surveying the political landscape over the last decade, these are the people who were sickened by the way the Republican-controlled Congress rubber-stamped President George W. Bush's brand of big-government Republicanism, with its runaway spending, Medicare prescription drug plan and federal expansion of education.

They welcomed the Tea Party movement as a counterweight to the earmark-taking, lobbyist-infested culture in Washington that perpetuates Big Government.

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