This article in the Sunday NY Times detailed how some of the moneymen in the Republican party–a group for the most part corralled by Karl Rove’s various political PACs–are trying to stop Tea Partiers from torpedoing the party’s chances in upcoming Senate races:
GOP Congressman Steve King is running for the Iowa seat, and according to GOP polling he’s a favorite for the nomination but would likely lose to the Democrat–exactly the situation that lost the GOP possible Senate pickups in Missouri and Indiana in 2012. The project’s strategy here and in similar races will be to encourage another right-wing extremist to run and spilt the Tea Party vote, allowing a more mainstream Republican to slip in for the general election.
Naturally, the Tea Party is fighting back:
Any thoughts on how this will play out? Money usually wins in these intra-party squabbles, but the momentum on the Tea Party side seems to be toward calling more of the shots–especially after a presidential campaign that saw the “establishment” Republican go down in flames.
Well, it was not the “GOP establishment” who created thatmonster. It was certain parties at Fox News, plus the health-care-insurance lobby and the Koch Brothers, plus, argubably somewhat, Ron Paul
Just to add, I found this editorial by Eric Erickson on his blog RedState:
Both Ericson and Rove are contributors to Fox News. Guess they won’t be shooting the breeze in the breakroom anytime soon (unless it invoves, you know, actual shooting).
Be an interesting experiment in SDMB archaeology. I remember lots of time we lefty Dopers would point out to our more retrograde colleagues that the Pubbies deal with the Devil was a losing proposition, that if they kept pandering to the knuckle-walking Trogs, sooner or later they would realize they were being had. The leadership kept feeding them promises, just one more big push, one more election, then no more gay abortions in churches. (Or something. Maybe that wasn’t it, all I remember was it was really, really bad and it didn’t exist.)
That sooner or later the Trogs would own their nuts and hold an option to buy their ass. And so it went. And the vultures have come home to roost.
I’m thinking that the raw power of money has faded. Buying traditional media still has clout, especially as a means of floating rumors and hinting that your opponent is a lesbian Bigfoot or a a fanatical Unitarian militant. But not so much anymore, Unca Karl spent 21 godzillabucks on advertising, and came up bust.
Now, its the interwebs, with smugly self-satisfied jerks arguing on message boards. And who occupies the acme and apex of that mountain? Let’s not let our blushing modesty keep us from admitting the obvious truth. Let the word go forth, and let the word be “Cite?”!
And let us resolve to rule with justice and reason. Bout time somebody did.
I can only speak for Missouri, but our seat was pretty much assuredly going to Todd Akin. Then the whole rape thing happened, and he crashed and burned. Claire McCaskill probably counts herself as one of the luckiest politicians in Washington. Prior to that, though, he was the heavy favorite in a reliably red state.
Here are more GOP groups fighting back at the GOP establishment. It’s not just Tea Party groups either, it’s groups like the Club for Growth. This has all the makings of a spectacular civil war. Lots of potential for the base to splinter over this, immigration reform and other stuff.
Slight aside, but one of the arguments against open primary voting is that one party can direct their vote to nominate a worthless opposing candidate - that is, if the Demo candidate has a lock on 90% of the Dem vote, organizers could get a large number of Democratic voters to cast their vote for the unelectable Madison J. Teaparty, putting him over the top of Reliable Q. Republican.
More worrying for the GOP is if Hillary stays healthy. She’d walk the nomination for 2016 and she’s incredibly popular; unbelievably, in a recent poll in Kentucky, the sixth most red state in 2012, she got 53% of the vote against a generic GOP candidate in a mythical 2016 matchup. If she’s the 2016 nominee the GOP will split between people who want demonise her like they did in the 1990s and people who recognise how pointless it would be. Hillary has the ability to open up every possible split in the GOP, between the modernisers and the teahadists, the pro and anti immigration groups, between the Enron wing and the Taliban wing of the party. It’d be total carnage.
She won’t run. She’s more popular now (as is evidenced by that KY poll) than she’s ever been. If she runs for president, it’ll be the 90s all over again. She has a legacy to think about.
I was just listening to right-wing talk-radio host Mark Levin, screaming about how the “corporatist” (i.e., moderate) Republicans (including Karl Rove) are the true enemy, and how they are undercutting the power of the “real” (Tea Party and rightwards) Republicans.
It’s like watching the monster kicking Dr. Frankenstein’s ass.
Yes let’s bring back Rovian “conservatism”! Huge deficits, housing bubble, war in Afganistan, Iraq war, terrorist attacks, bailouts, torture, increased anti-American sentiment worldwide, etc.
The democrats have already jumped in any middle ground Rove could hope to gain. He wasted huge amounts on losers in 2012. There were more establishment republicans who lost in the past cycle than tea partiers. He’s just looking for a new gimmick to keep his pockets good.