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RedState.com editor-in-chief Erick Erickson and Business Insider politics editor Josh Barro went toe-to-toe in columns published Tuesday over their competing visions for the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

Erickson began his column with a pointed description of Barro, a moderate conservative who has frequently called for reform of the GOP.

"Josh Barro is a late twenty-something gay male who hates conservatives, champions Obamacare, attacks Republicans for wanting to oppose it, supports the tax hikes that come with Obamacare, wants to rid the GOP of social conservatives, and gets fawning pieces of prattle composed by liberals who want everyone to know that their friend Josh Barro is a conservative reformer who wants less conservatism," Erickson wrote.

Barro, who jumped from Bloomberg View to BI just last week, fired back with his own piece, calling out Erickson for invoking his sexual orientation.

"But at least this statement, unlike some that follow it, has the virtue of being correct," Barro wrote, before debunking Erickson's piece.

For example, Barro pointed out that he has worked on a campaign, contrary to Erickson's claim that he hasn't. Barro volunteered for Mitt Romney's 2002 gubernatorial campaign, a part of his biography that was highlighted in a recent profile in The Atlantic. http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/conservative-writers-josh-
barro-erick-erickson-trade-barbs?ref=fpb]

In his response to Erickson, Barro refrained from the kind of personal attacks (mostly untrue) quoted above, instead focusing on the problem Erickson represents to the Republican Party:

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Conservative pundit Erick Erickson doesn’t like me. This morning he wrote 900 words about why.

But the main thing his post reveals is what’s wrong with Erickson – and with a Republican party that is built to appeal to people like Erickson.

He starts by noting that I am “a late twenty-something gay male.” I’m not sure why my sexual orientation is mentioned right at the top of his hit piece on me, following only my age. (Just kidding; I know exactly why Erickson mentioned this so early.) But at least this statement, unlike some that follow it, has the virtue of being correct.
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But the bulk of the piece isn’t even really about me; it’s about Erickson’s resentment of New York- and Washington-based “elites.” He says our location makes it harder to “connect to the real world,” as though New York and Washington were not real places populated by real people.

And for two decades, the Republican party’s strategy to overcome its disadvantage on economic issues has been a cultural appeal to people like Erickson: non-urban whites who feel threatened by social change. That is, the kind of people who think it’s an alarming trend that women are financially independent, or who think the most salient fact about a writer they dislike might be his sexual orientation.

This is a strategic problem for Republicans for several reasons. One is that the party’s reliance on a resentment-based appeal has caused its policy apparatus to atrophy. Erickson is not alone among conservatives in thinking that “academic and technocratic” approaches are best left to pointy-headed liberals. Another is that people like Erickson are a declining share of the electorate.

Basically, Erickson is derpy. And Erickson has big appeal to conservatives because lots of them are derpy. But the country is getting less derpy, and in time the Republican party will have to get less derpy, too. That’s my project, and I don’t expect Erickson to like it. Excerpts from http://www.businessinsider.com/erick-erickson-shows-the-worst-in-gop-2
013-6#ixzz2VGRjDEuI]

Erickson's piece ( http://www.redstate.com/2013/06/04/on-conservative-reformers/) focuses on the concept that "Republicans" aren't really "conservatives" and that "Republican reformers" are "poseurs" from New York and Washington the media only pays attention to because liberals like them. Like Barro, of whom he writes: "But if he dropped the R, nobody would even read him."

The interesting thing for me is the difference in TONE, between nasty (and especially untrue) personal verbiage of Erickson and the more generalized cautionary language of Barro.

I see this as a reflection of what I'm seeing all around; those on the right who are speaking up and encouraging moderation are attacked in ways and with language which seems to me out of proportion, and definitely IS pretty nasty. I hope more and more of the reasonable Republicans start speaking up and do what they can to fix the party, but it's obvious it will take courage, considering what they will endure.