The Wall Street Journal tackles the the Club for Growth, some conservatives’ financial answer to the problem of overwhelming incumbent retention in Congress. The piece, in which some moderates fault the Club for shrinking the GOP caucus, misses two important points.

First, it does not even mention the group’s biggest endorsement mistake since its inception — perhaps because this mistake does not fit as cleanly into the anti-Club narrative offered by moderates. That was the Club’s support for Bill Sali (R, Idaho) in a multi-way open primary for Idaho’s first district in 2006. That district is one of the most Republican in the nation (it gave 61 percent of its vote to John McCain for president last year), and the Club’s goal was to prevent moderate-liberal state Sen. Sheila Sorenson (R) from winning an open-seat primary over a crowded conservative field.

The Club just picked the wrong guy to support, because there were other, better conservative alternatives in that race. Sali proved to be a poor politician and a poor fundraiser who prevailed in 2006 almost entirely because of money the Club’s donors provided him. Last year, it was reported that vendors were refusing to extend credit to his campaign because of its poor finances. He was defeated by a Democrat.

The second and more important point discusses the two other congressional seats mentioned in the Wall Street Journal piece — those formerly held by moderates Wayne Gilchrest (R, Md.) and Joe Schwarz (R, Mich.). Both men were defeated in primary elections by Club-backed candidates, who in turn narrowly lost their seats to Democrats.

The piece omits the fact that both Gilchrest and Schwarz were not just typical Republican moderates, many of whom still exist in Congress and elsewhere. These two men, after losing their respective primaries, each endorsed a Democrat for his former seat against his Republican primary opponent, helping the Democrats win in both cases. In a normal world, one where we weren’t all looking for a conservative scapegoat for GOP fortunes, this would probably be taken as confirmation that both of these Republican members of Congress really needed a party primary.