Posted on 11/03/2009 12:48:58 PM PST by BGHater
In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.
Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.
But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.
Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one — facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.
“I would say it’s the tip of the spear,” said Dick Armey, the former GOP House majority leader who now serves as chairman of FreedomWorks, an organization that has been closely aligned with the tea party movement. “We are the biggest source of energy in American politics today.”
“What you’re going to see,” said Armey, “is moderates and conservatives across the country in primaries.”
These high-stakes primaries, pitting the activist wing of the party against the establishment wing, stand to have a profound impact on the 2010 election landscape since they will create significant problems for moderate candidates recruited by the national party precisely because they appear well-suited to win in places that are not easily — or even plausibly — won by conservative candidates.
The tensions between the two visions threaten to limit the party’s gains in an election year that is shaping up in its favor.
Party strategists worry that well-funded, well-organized challenges from the right could force Republicans to exhaust precious resources on messy primary fights — or force moderate candidates to adopt more strident positions early on that could haunt them during the final months of the campaign.
“For me, what this says is, we need to take a deep breath and decide whether [moderates and conservatives] work together or not,” said Tom Davis, the former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “And if we don’t, it can get very, very ugly.”
Activists contend that the only way back to majority status is to embrace the conservative principles that the party jettisoned during the past decades once it became too enamored of power. To them, the issue is less about ideological purity than about the compromises they see the party’s Washington establishment making and what they contend is a lack of support for conservative candidates who are deemed unelectable by GOP solons.
“New York 23, on some scale, is the first battle of a larger internal Republican debate over how to define the party,” said former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a conservative who is challenging Crist for the Senate nomination. “They want us to vote for their candidates, but they don’t want us to run for office.”
Rubio’s race is one that many on the right point to as the next New York 23, a contest where conservatives and tea party activists are in open revolt about Crist and the national party’s decision to endorse him despite his embrace — literally — of President Barack Obama and his stimulus package during a Florida visit in February.
Rubio has won nearly a dozen county GOP straw polls across the state and is rapidly becoming a darling of the tea party movement.
Everett Wilkinson, an organizer for the Florida Tea Party Patriots, said his group plans to take part in get-out-the-vote activities and other efforts to deny Crist the GOP nomination, despite the fact that Crist leads both Rubio and Rep. Kendrick Meek, the likely Democratic nominee, by a comfortable margin.
To Wilkinson, he’d rather burn the house down if it means saving it.
“We would lose if Charlie Crist got elected or if another person who doesn’t support our policies got elected,” he said. “Our members are actively going to get out there and create awareness of the governor’s actions.”
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a leading conservative who has endorsed Rubio, said he viewed the Florida Senate race as distinct from the New York special election. But he agreed with Rubio’s contention that the national party needed to broaden its outlook on candidates.
“I’m not saying our party made a mistake, because there’s a debate within the party over what we should be,” he said. “If we just start looking at who can win — sometimes we might miss a gem in the rough in effect. And I said from the beginning, that’s what I think Rubio is.”
Florida turns out to be one of many states where Senate candidates favored — in one way or another — by the National Republican Senatorial Committee are facing serious pushback from the grass roots.
In almost every situation, the lay of the land is the same. Whether it’s California, Illinois, Connecticut, New Hampshire or Kentucky, the NRSC has found a candidate who appears to be an exceptionally strong general election prospect — either well-known, well-financed or ideologically well-suited to the state’s politics — who is nevertheless meeting with tough resistance at the grass-roots level from activists who believe the conservative cause would be better served over the long term, even if it means the party nominee loses in the short term.
Even in Illinois, where polls shows Kirk would be highly competitive as a general election candidate in a state in which Republicans have been crushed in recent elections, the prospect of picking up the president’s former Senate seat isn’t enough to win over many activists.
“We’re going to work hard as hell to make sure Mark Kirk doesn’t win,” said Evert Evertsen, an Illinois tea party organizer. “Mark Kirk is about as liberal as Arlen Specter was.”
GOP House and Senate incumbents are fair game, too.
In Utah, where Bennett has won reelection by landslide margins since first winning the seat in 1992, disgruntled conservatives are looking to take him down in next year’s state party convention after his Wall Street bailout vote last fall and several other high-profile votes in which he broke with the right.
In the House, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) is among a handful of GOP veterans facing primary challenges of varying competitiveness for their departures from conservative orthodoxy.
“It’s kind of like investors in a company saying they’re not going to tolerate it anymore. And that’s what we’re seeing here,” said Eric Odom, executive director of the American Liberty Alliance, a libertarian-oriented group. “We’re already gearing up. This is just the beginning.”
Why are the liberal faggots at Politico and other leftist outlets so concerned with what happens to the GOP?
Just sayin’....
Exactly how Rush explained it today.
Why should the Demo-Rats care how we fare?
It is they and they State-Run Media who keep advising us on how we should be more "inclusive" when the same standards do not apply to to the Rat party.
Moreover, if what we are doing is so destructive, then by all means, they should be happy and let us go on our merry way to walking off that cliff.
Methinks they doth protest too much as they are worried witless that their Messiah and Politburo (Congress) have awakened the sleeping giant silent majority and see the handwriting on the wall: which is their days are numbered and they know it.
That is what got us into this mess.
We need some solid steps to the right. One of the beauties of incrementalism is that by the time you get 'there' people have forgotten what it was like where they left.
How about I recall building a garage with no permit needed.
How about putting a check in an envelope, and the postman delivering your rifle in a couple of weeks, parcel post?
How about open religious displays during the Christmas season, commerating the birth of the guy that Christmas was named after?
Prayer (optional participation--you didn't say it if you did not want to) and the Pledge of Allegiance said every day in school at the start of the day?
The ability to fill the mudhole on the back of your property and use that land--without permits?
Look America, and weep at what we have lost!
Then dig in. grit your teeth, and gird your loins for the long haul, because we're gong to take it back!
We need to stop calling these rat wanna be`s “moderates” and call them what they are,liberal republicans.
The FACTS the author forgot to mention is that Rubio also beats Meek. The RATS have given up on Florida, so whoever wins the GOP primary will most likely go on to win the seat! Another fact is that among voters who know both Crist and Rubio, Rubio beats Crist. This give Rubio huge opportunity to close the gap and win the nomination.
I would rather use strategy and pick them off one at a time, knowing we had a strong candidate and the right conditions, versus trying a half-assed job with weak candidates in 12 different races going on at the same time.
When is Dick Armey going to replace Michael Steele?
That’s one nightmare that can turned into a pleasant dream.
I agree.
What a waste of a 56 Chevy!
If, God willing, Hoffman wins, we need 434 OTHER Hoffmans to start tomorrow.
Great. All is lost unless Conservatives oppose the unity of the Republican and Democratic parties. Even losing keeps the ship alive. Reagan didn’t win right away either.
Since no one seems to be responding to your shouting, I'll give you a quickee response.
The GOP has to be cleansed from within. A third party choice is viable on a case-by-case basis.
What the Hoffman race has shown is that party officials chose a GOP candidate in wolf's clothing because, they opined, she was the only viable choice to win the seat. A certain percentage of her support was of registered GOPers that presumed she was primarily in line with conservative positions.
As it became clear that this woman was beyond the pale a movement began that gathered steam and Palin broke the dam, followed by...the followers. And presuming the poll numbers hold up the lie told by the GOP that only an ultra-RINO could win there has been proven to be pure fiction.
And that will be the thrust of the various challenges to candidates put forward by the GOP come next year and it will be the fight made before the primaries and in some cases after the primaries. So if your passion is brought on by the idea of a national third party I think, as of now, you are misreading the tea leaves for the most part.
In the coming election season you will see a significant shift in campaign contributions that instead of going to the GOP reelection committees will go directly to the candidate. If the GOP choice is strong the $ will flow to the candidate. If the GOP choice is too RINOish, $ will head to an independent or third party candidate. This is where you will see Palin creating a national movement and a grassroots base that she will need to mount a winning presidential candidacy.
Independent/third party candidates can win and caucus with the GOP when it is in the right and refuse to caucus when it is against basic conservative values.
The bottom line: the GOP big wigs are going to surely learn that they may have the reins to one of the two big parties but they are not the final choice by proxy. They have to earn it and if they refuse to do so then piece by piece, from both inside and outside of the party, they will be outgunned and forced to return to the party's foundational roots.
The only objections are from teh insiders who fear this will screw up the pay for candidacy contributions.
Great analogy.
A few focused victories (crist, ghramnessty, perhaps mccain) and then the RINOs will pay attention.
as it stands now the country club is just shuffling around their pals to find out who is going to be running on which clone ticket.
Where is the balance here? We all know the Democrats are also pushing their moderates out. Lieberman anyone? They’re already threatening the “Blue Dog Democrats” with primary challenges.
Democrats are obsessed with the GOP. It's very odd, and telling...
It appears to me that you are working from a premise that is highly flawed. One problem is that you seem to assume that the party is the reference frame, that if conservatives and the GOP are separating it is because the conservatives are running away. Me, I'm pretty much right where I always have been. If me and the GOP aren't on the same continent these days, it doesn't mean that I went anywhere.
The other, related, issue is that you seem to be assuming there was ever a connection in the first place. Again, just talking about me here, I have voted R in the past because it just so happened that they were the least worst candidates, not due to party loyalty.
The GOP can do whatever it likes. If it wants to go after the moderate vote more than it wants the conservative, that's its choice to make. But my vote belongs to me, to use as I see fit, and the cost of those moderate votes may be running a candidate that I will not support. If there is "running away" going on, it's not me that's doing it.
Get rid of the trojan horse, Michael Steele. He is destroying the party by backing liberals and I don’t mean RINOS or moderates, I do mean liberals. I don’t trust him, can’t stand him, won’t donate a single cent until he is gone.
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