The Wall Street Journal has taken the position staked out by Ramesh, Jonah, Andrew, Jim Geraghty and I me on the topic of the Delaware Republican Senate primary:

The tea party movement has largely been a boon for the country, reviving the case for limited government and a properly understood Constitution. Now that the general election campaign is near, however, we’ll see how well the movement and its favored candidates can close the sale and pragmatically advance their goals.

We say this in particular about their relationship to the Republican Party, and vice versa. The GOP is a more natural ideological home for most tea partiers than is the other major party, but they also suspect many Republicans of committing pragmatism, if not selling out too easily to Beltway mores. They have a point.

On the other hand, sometimes you need a few “wets” to gain a majority and advance your own ideas. Ask Nancy Pelosi, who rode the victories of Rahm Emanuel’s hand-picked Blue Dog Democrats to the House Speakership in 2006 and then used them to pass 40 years of liberal dreams in this Congress.

This political dilemma is coming to a head in next week’s Senate primary in Delaware to determine the GOP nominee for Joe Biden’s former seat. Congressman and former Governor Mike Castle is running and is thought to be an easy general election winner. This would be a net GOP gain in a blue state that gave President Obama 62% of the vote in 2008. Such pickups aren’t easy to come by.

Mr. Castle will never be mistaken for South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, however, and he has a moderate voting record across his 18 years in Congress. His (still unapologetic) support for cap and tax last year is especially radioactive for many GOP primary voters, whether or not they are tea party fellow-travelers. That voting record has drawn a primary challenge from Christine O’Donnell, an itinerant conservative commentator and activist who is supported by some in the tea party movement and national talk radio. She is close in the polls and could pull an upset.

If she does defeat Mr. Castle, however, she has little chance to win in November. A two-time loser statewide, Ms. O’Donnell has a history of financial troubles and recently told the Weekly Standard her home and office were vandalized, though she hadn’t reported it to police. She recently accused a conservative local talk radio host that he had been “paid off” by Mr. Castle’s supporters after he asked her tough questions.

So GOP primary voters must decide if they want to vote for Mr. Castle, a moderate who would help Republicans organize the Senate and who opposed ObamaCare but who will give them heartburn on some issue in the future. Or they can vote their heart even if it means giving up a Senate seat.

The editors even end, as Ramesh began, with WFB’s dictum:

Politics in our two-party system is about coalition building, and any successful party must stretch across many groups. Republicans will have to accommodate much of the tea party agenda if they hope to assemble a new majority and avoid third-party challenges. But tea partiers who want to restore proper Constitutional limits, rather than merely pad the ratings of talk radio, might recall William F. Buckley Jr.’s counsel that his policy was to vote for the most conservative candidate who could win.