Is the GOP an echo or a choice? Republicans won't let principle stop them from losing.

• Author: Cavanaugh, Tim
• Position: Republican Party

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ESTABLISHMENT Democrats don't come much more established than Dianne Feinstein. The senior senator from California has been in public life since the early 1960s. As a former president of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors and former mayor, DiFi is as iconic of the City by the Bay as a cable car full of Rice-a-Roni.

In the Senate, Feinstein embodies the lethal center, ever ready to vote for bipartisan boondoggles and back fellow big-government hornswogglers. You can find the patented Feinstein Yea on virtually every major expansion of government power in the last 10 years, including the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq, Sarbanes-Oxley, the USA PATRIOT Act (and its subsequent reauthorizations), the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (which created the notorious Troubled Asset Relief Program), the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare), and Dodd-Frank.

Feinstein's high-and-inside status would seem to be a liability in an age of growing anti-establishment sentiment. While the remnants of Occupy Wall Street complain about the perfidy of the 1 percent, the senator is said to be worth somewhere between $50 million and $100 million; her 2005 fiscal disclosure statement was, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, "nearly the size of a phone book." Legistorm.com puts Feinstein's staff at more than 80 people with a payroll of more than $4 million a year--much larger and more expensive than most Senate staffs. In appearances, Feinstein tends to be surrounded by underlings like "a Gilbert and Sullivan monarch," as a Los Angeles Times colleague once described it to me.

Feinstein is increasingly out of step with the electorate. "I voted in support of this bill because I believe it remains our best chance at reforming our broken health care system," Feinstein said of her ObamaCare vote in 2009. That's a lot to walk back now that a solid majority of Americans want to repeal ObamaCare and more than 70 percent (according to a March ABC/Washington Post poll) believe the law's individual mandate is unconstitutional.

You'd think Republicans would be champing at this particular bit, fielding highly compelling candidates in an effort to recapture one of the Senate's crown jewels. They are not, and their inaction illustrates why the opposition party is apt to squander its chance to capitalize on the unqualified disaster of President Barack Obama's first term in office.

There are plenty of...