Uncivil War: Conservatives to challenge a dozen GOP candidates

[Danno 1,228]

Uncivil War: Conservatives to challenge a dozen GOP candidates

By: Charles Mahtesian and Alex Isenstadt

November 3, 2009 04:38 AM EST

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29057.html

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 ####### 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.”

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

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.

The success? Yeah, Hoffman and the tea baggers lost and what used to be GOP seat in the House for over 130 years is now a seat occupied by a Democrat. What a success indeed!

I hope that the tea baggers get Rubio the GOP nomination for US Senate here in FL. Or that they run Rubio against Crist in the general election should he get the GOP nomination - the more likely scenario seeing that Crist enjoys 50% support within the registered Republican voters. Either way, the odds of the GOP losing the Senate seat in 2010 would greatly improve. Rubio would have close to no shot at winning the general election and Crist would have no shot if the GOP vote is split between him and Rubio. If the GOP runs Crist with no flank from the right, the Senate seat would almost certainly remain in GOP hands. But is seems that the tea baggers are willing to hand the seat to the Democrats to save the principle that no moderate may run for a GOP seat.

Self destruction at it's best. Go for it!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Big Dog,

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are just setting us up for the kill. With this staged loss in NY23, they have us right where they want us.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

[SMR 368]

So you're going to poke fun at people that consider the political future of the country important enough to take time off from work. Most liberal protestors have no job that they have to take time off from.

In response to the OP, it's a tough issue. The 23rd district shows exactly what could happen if the conservatives try to break or move right. On the other hand, if you don't do it, you get Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe. When you have candidates like that running for the Republicans, a lot of conservatives realize that whether you elect a Republicrat or a Demican, you'll get the same result.

But the 23rd is a lesson to be learned for the Republican party. They can't keep moving left and expect the base to support them.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

But the 23rd is a lesson to be learned for the Republican party. They can't keep moving left and expect the base to support them.

The real lesson is that what's 'left' in Alafuckingbama may be center or even right in upstate NY. Dede may not have been acceptable as a Republican in Texas but she was the NY23 nominee and the 'national party' should have stayed out. Instead, they've given the D's a seat they haven't held since the Civil War. Good job, dumbfucks.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Big Dog,

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are just setting us up for the kill. With this staged loss in NY23, they have us right where they want us.

So you weren't the only one who saw the implied threat in that Palin interview at the Turkey slaughterhouse?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Big Dog,

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are just setting us up for the kill. With this staged loss in NY23, they have us right where they want us.

So you weren't the only one who saw the implied threat in that Palin interview at the Turkey slaughterhouse?

Palin's the smartest politician to have ever walked the earth. Everything she does and says, everything she lets us see and think, is deliberate and purposeful.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Big Dog,

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are just setting us up for the kill. With this staged loss in NY23, they have us right where they want us.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Most liberal protestors have no job that they have to take time off from.

That's just the kind of attitude that resonates well with American voters.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Big Dog,

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are just setting us up for the kill. With this staged loss in NY23, they have us right where they want us.

So you weren't the only one who saw the implied threat in that Palin interview at the Turkey slaughterhouse?

Palin's the smartest politician to have ever walked the earth. Everything she does and says, everything she lets us see and think, is deliberate and purposeful.

I hear that there was footage left on the cutting room floor where she winks at the camera and draws a finger across her throat.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

That you've even heard that is part of her plan. She leaves nothing to chance. She is the most interesting woman in the world. Nay, the most interesting person.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Put it this way - I don't think its any coincidence that "V" is back on TV again.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Palin's the smartest politician to have ever walked the earth. Everything she does and says, everything she lets us see and think, is deliberate and purposeful.

AJ, I believe you misoverestimate her.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Palin's the smartest politician to have ever walked the earth. Everything she does and says, everything she lets us see and think, is deliberate and purposeful.

AJ, I believe you misoverestimate her.

You misunderestimate her at own peril.