Tea Party vs. Liberal Politicians

Is the tea party ready to chill out?

After 2014 losses, conservative activists chart a new strategy by Kyle Cheney, 11/26/14

Most of their candidates were crushed this year, even as their party won big. Now, many tea party activists are embracing a strategy for 2016 that’s strikingly at odds with the movement’s take-no-prisoners approach.

It’s time, they say, to show a little restraint.

In interviews, more than a dozen conservative leaders said the activist right needs to be pickier about which Republican incumbents it challenges in primaries, acknowledging its total wipeout in primary challenges to resurgent establishment Republicans.

“I would generally urge my conservative friends to not focus on the primaries as much as on open races,” said Richard Viguerie, a veteran tea party operative. “There’s some primaries you have to go out there — and you should — but I wouldn’t spend as much energy and resources on incumbents, particularly for Senate.”

Though many of the conservatives noted that just the threat of a primary challenge can pull a mainstream Republican senator to the right, some questioned the wisdom of targeting relatively reliable conservatives this year, such as Kansas’ Pat Roberts and Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell. As a general rule, they said, the tea party should only go after Republican incumbents who are to the left of their state’s electorate. They mentioned New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, Illinois’ Mark Kirk and Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey — Republicans representing liberal or moderate electorates – as senators up for reelection in 2016 who may deserve a pass on those grounds.

Such a strategic change may be easier said than done; many of the conservative movement’s ideological leaders and top funders are dedicated to the notion that it’s better to be right than to win. And the question of which moderate Republicans deserve a pass is a subject of inevitable dispute. Joe Carr, who ran unsuccessfully in the GOP primary against Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, is one who urges a more cautious, strategic approach — even as he defends his decision to take on Alexander.

“As conservatives, we have to do a good job of choosing the battles that move the pendulum in the Senate more to the right,” said Carr, who maintains that Alexander is still more liberal than the voters of Tennessee. “If we move the pendulum to the right, let’s make sure we don’t knock some of our own players out of the way unnecessarily.”

That would be a reversal for groups like Senate Conservatives Fund and Tea Party Patriots, which — along with groups like Club for Growth, the Madison Project and FreedomWorks — spent north of $11 million on ads during primary season, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, only to see its candidates flop. Neither group would make its leaders available to comment on its thinking about 2016.

It was a miserable year for the tea party, with its highest-profile candidates all losing to establishment-backed incumbents. In Kansas, Milton Wolf, a doctor and distant relative of President Barack Obama, was roiled by a professional scandal and lost to Roberts. In Mississippi, conservative challenger Chris McDaniel bested Republican Sen. Thad Cochran on primary day but fell short in a runoff that still has the right crying foul. In Kentucky, Matt Bevin was crushed by McConnell despite tea party support for the challenge. Alexander, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Texas Sen. John Cornyn also survived feeble tea party-backed challenges.

“I think strategically we’ll have to be a little bit smarter,” said Drew Ryun, political director of the Madison Project, a conservative political action committee. “I think there’s going to maybe have to be a narrowed focus, maybe not spreading the field as we did this election cycle.”

Indeed, it’s not enough to run losing candidates simply to make a statement, argued Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List: “If you’re going to shoot a bear, you better kill it. If you actually are going to engage in a primary challenge, play to win.”

Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who was the choice of many social conservatives during his 2012 presidential bid, is one who argues that conservatives should take on moderate Republicans in conservative states but give a pass to moderates representing more liberal constituents.

“I think you have to be smart,” he said. “If your voting record or level of activism isn’t up with what the majority of folks in your state would like to see in your party, then I think a challenge is a legitimate thing.”

That, Santorum said, could exempt Ayotte, Toomey and Kirk — all top Democratic targets in 2016. He added that he doesn’t expect any of them to face a serious challenge from the right.

 

Chris McDaniel's loss to Sen. Thad Cochran in the Mississippi runoff still has the right crying foul. | AP Photo

Arizona Sen. John McCain may be less fortunate. McCain, a former presidential nominee who has built an identity around sometimes poking his party’s base in the eye, has already emerged as a top target for conservatives — if he ultimately decides to run for a sixth term. Last week, McCain took steps toward a reelection bid and predicted he’ll face a primary challenger.

Carr said McCain may be a “viable target” for conservatives, but only if there’s a responsible alternative who has a reasonable chance of holding the seat.

“In McCain’s case, can we get that truly viable alternative that can articulate the conservative message without making a mess of things?” Carr wondered.

 

Milton Wolf was roiled by a scandal and lost to Sen. Pat Robert in Kansas.| AP Photo

Leaders of some conservative groups say their decisions to go after incumbents in primaries will depend largely on how the new Republican Senate majority governs. If leaders capitulate to Democratic demands or water down their ideological principles, they say, conservatives may be as fired up as ever to mount challenges.

“Republicans create the most problems when they’re in the majority a lot of the time,” said Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth. He argued that GOP lawmakers often “work hard to protect the majority at all costs and therefore lose.”

“Let’s see how our officeholders behave between now and 2016,” added Jim Gilmore, a former Virginia governor who embraces — and has been embraced by — the tea party movement. “If Republicans adopt a good [policy agenda] and move the country ahead, I think that a lot of these primary challengers will take care of themselves … We need to have a positive, conservative approach to the challenges facing the nation. I think that we can unify the tea party conservatives and the regular conservatives.”

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/tea-party-113175.html

Comments

In the Georgia Primary we supported Constitutional candidates. They each received 25% of the vote.  Most Georgia voters haven’t thought through this solution to paying down our debt and setting policy to support a free enterprise system. Voters don’t yet see the disconnect between what many of our incumbents say vs. how the vote. 

We have supported more discussion of the Constitution and it is happening.  More candidates are actually talking about closing the US Department of Education, so we know we are having some impact.

We follow the legislators’ scores posted by the Club for Growth, Heritage Action, New American Freedom Index, and Numbers USA for the US Congress and electtherightcandidate.us for Georgia Legislators.

Tea Parties were busy this year fighting UN Agenda 21 implementation at the city, county and state level and have been fighting Common Core and the Convention of States. We were urging our legislators to nullify bad federal laws and regulations. We don’t like federal grants to states and we don’t like the Federal Reserve. All of this gets RINOs nervous, because they are too dependent on campaign contributions from to the Chamber of Communists. We have been promoting the US Constitution (as written) and the 10^th Amendment.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader