Why should you care if the NIU College Republicans won’t register Democrats to vote? Because it exhibits a symptom of a disease that has poisoned our nation’s politics.

A recent Northern Star article reported that at a meeting, College Republicans President Eric Johnson implied that he and other members would register only Republican-leaning voters during a “Campus Canvass” project.

Johnson claimed his statements were “in jest.” Documents obtained from that meeting, however, instructed members to offer to register a student who is “Republican or Leaning Republican,” but if the student “expresses a preference only for Democrats, simply thank him and move on.”

While the CRs don’t seem to be breaking any laws, they are mired in the same ethical muck that affected politics on the national stage: a doctrine of win-at-any-cost – even if that cost is the democratic process.

Although this is nothing new to politics, it seems to have grown especially virulent in recent years.

In the 2000 Republican primaries, George W. Bush’s supporters, trailing in the polls, smeared war hero and then-Presidential candidate John McCain with dirty tactics. And then there was the 2000 presidential election, in which the state of Florida (of which Bush’s brother, Jeb, is governor), used a badly flawed list of felons to deny voting rights to thousands of innocent black voters.

More recently, we’ve seen it in the now-discredited Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads. The Washington Post discovered the military records of one of the group’s own principal accusers, Larry Thurlow, contradict his newly “discovered” version of events and confirm John Kerry’s. But when you’re trying to win at politics, little things like the truth aren’t important.

Republicans aren’t the only ones. Someone duped the CBS show “60 Minutes” into reporting bogus documents about Bush receiving preferential treatment in the Air National Guard. And some ads from the liberal MoveOn.org can be highly misleading as well.

The College Republicans are demonstrating these same win-at-any-cost tactics. And while Johnson’s excuse that “interest groups around the country do the same thing” may be true, it doesn’t pardon the CRs for putting their party before the democratic process of their country.

Ironically, it’s not Democrats, but other Republicans on campus that this situation hurts most. And they already have a hard enough time getting the generally liberal college community to listen to them without being misrepresented by the questionable ethical practices of certain members of their own party.

Instead of seeking only people who already share their views (the CR document claims that arguing with Democrats is “only a waste of time and effort”), the CRs should actively encourage argument, hoping to generate meaningful discussion about issues such as the economy, Iraq and terrorism. Whatever other programs the CRs may offer, the controversial Campus Canvass does not do this – a pity, since argument and debate are cornerstones of our democracy.

The philosopher Joseph Joubert writes that the aim of an argument “should not be victory, but progress.” The CRs – and other partisan groups – should drop programs like the Campus Canvass that are interested only in partisan victory regardless of cost and try to make progress on the issues.

Progress – whichever side you’re on – is never a waste of time.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.