A purity test on early voting sites: Is this what once-mighty Tarrant GOP has become? Opinion

Tarrant County Republicans recently formed a circular firing squad.

Never missing an opportunity to elevate a minor dispute into an existential crisis, the party rebuked its two elected county commissioners, Gary Fickes and Manny Ramirez , for daring to deviate on the all-important question of where to place early-voting polling sites.

The sniping shows what happens when party purity runs amok. It's not good for anyone — except maybe the opposing party.

It also demonstrates that for some partisans, the real enemies are those who share their R or D label but dare to disagree on even the most picayune issues.

Fickes is retiring at the end of the year, so Ramirez took the brunt of it. The northwest Tarrant County commissioner voted Sept. 12 to approve a list of early voting sites that included disputed locations at the University of Texas at Arlington and Tarrant County College campuses. That left Republican County Judge Tim O'Hare as the only vote in favor of pulling those sites.

County GOP leaders lashed out with a fervor Republicans used to reserve for Democrats. Vice chairman Cary Cheshire said Ramirez was "voting with Democrats to hurt our chances." Party Chairman Bo French echoed the message and later said Ramirez sided with "radical leftists."

Ramirez took umbrage, describing his vote as a defense of "free, fair and equal access to voting" and noting that the location of a few voting sites isn't exactly the highest priority among Republican principles. Soon, the party leadership voted to censure Ramirez and Fickes .

That's right: An actual, written rebuke for a vote on a couple of polling places.

The vote revealed more about French and GOP leaders than it did about Ramirez. For one thing, it certified that the party wants elected officials to act in the interest of the party, not necessarily voters overall — an understandable stance for a partisan but a bad look for a county commissioner.

It also demonstrated, yet again, a fear and paranoia about losing elections that is unbecoming of what has been the majority party in the county and state for decades now. Republicans sounded like they didn't think they could win without stacking the deck, not exactly the ringing endorsement of conservative governance that should come from party leaders.

On the substance of the matter, such as it was, the fight was ridiculous . Reasonable people could take O'Hare's position that the UTA site was redundant, with a courthouse site nearby, or Ramirez's stance that the county shouldn't eliminate a polling place that draws thousands of voters.

Some Democrats hugged and wept over the vote. Politics, as they say, is a helluva drug.

Republicans didn't go that far; they instead funneled their emotion into the hit on Ramirez. In doing so, they revealed a dangerous trend for the party, locally, in Texas and nationwide: A greater zeal for punishing heretics within the group than for taking the fight to Democrats.

The censure also smacked of a loyalty test unbecoming such a small matter. It calls on the wayward commissioners to "publicly commit to supporting [O'Hare], Sheriff Bill Waybourn and our Republican voters and activists to promote election integrity and to ensure that the Republican Party succeeds" in November.

State and local GOP groups, many overrun by conspiracy theorists and far-right activists, have gone to this well so often that most elected officials shrug it off. But there is a real cost. Texas Republican Party rules seem to allow for censured candidates to be barred from the party primary ballot . Such a battle would surely land in court, but a party that defines itself so narrowly is headed for one destiny: permanent minority status.

Parties work best as broad coalitions. It's true that in recent decades, the two parties have realigned to the point that you don't see many "liberal Republicans" or "conservative Democrats" anymore. But there has to be room for disagreement. Anyone think that Donald Trump, or for that matter, Ronald Reagan, won any election because each of his voters was in lock-step with him?

Ramirez is a solid conservative and the kind of potential rising star whom the party should be putting front and center, not censuring over something so trivial as an early voting location.

And if the fight over those locations is really that central to the Tarrant GOP's success, surely its leaders have more urgent work to tend to just weeks before Election Day.

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