From The Note;

The Republican Party steered clear of passing a so-called “purity test” proposed by a handful of conservative members of the Republican National Committee and instead passed a toothless watered-down resolution that “urges” Republican Party leadership to consider a candidate’s record and statements and fidelity to the party platform before providing financial support or an endorsement.

In the wake of the special House race in upstate New York last November where the Republican Party candidate DeDe Scozzafava found her campaign derailed by conservatives, several RNC members proposed the idea of passing a resolution where GOP candidates would have to agree to eight out of 10 stated policy positions before being eligible for support from the RNC.

The proposal, initially drafted by Indiana national committeeman James Bopp, was met with strong resistance by state party chairs concerned about such a one-size-fits-all approach.  This week, RNC Chairman Michael Steele made clear that he, too, opposed the proposed resolution.

That sent members of the RNC scrambling to come up with an alternate proposal that could win the support of the full national committee. At a time when Republicans are feeling bullish about capitalizing on their victories in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts at the start of this midterm election year, nobody seemed interested in putting the intra-party rift on full display.

Bopp attempted to paint the watered down alternative that passed by unanimous voice vote today as a more stringent requirement for Republican candidates, but the language of the adopted resolution makes clear that there is no binding litmus test in place for a candidate to garner Republican Party financial and political support.

After the vote, Oregon Republican Party Chairman Bob Tiernan and Bopp got into what became a heated exchange over the resolution.

“I would say read the resolution,” Tiernan said. ”It says what it says.  It is a suggestion, it’s common sense, we do stick to our principles, but there’s nothing mandatory down there, there’s nothing required. I am a chairman and I’m not going to take that back and make my candidates sign it.  That’s ridiculous.  We rejected the litmus test today.”

Bopp quoted from the resolution: “This is binding, you are to determine — determine — that the candidate wholeheartedly supports the core principles.”

When Tiernan again asserted that there is nothing binding in what passed today, Bopp told him to “shut up.”

Republicans may have avoided a divisive purity test for their candidates today, but it clearly doesn’t mean that the differences among and between party loyalists have disappeared, no matter how good the political climate is for them right now.

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Kristofer Lorelli is the Senior Editor of Race42012 and can be contacted at kristofer.lorelli@rightOsphere.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_Lorelli