Except the difference in the Senate is when someone gets “primaried” by a TPer they often lose to a Democrat in the general. Remember Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell? The Republicans would probably control the Senate if this sort of thing hadn’t happened.
States aren’t “safe” for whack-o Republicans the way some Congressional Districts are.
Don’t you think the Democrats have some interest in seeing the Tea Party movement ended, even if it means more Republicans get elected?
I should think Democrats would happily give up a few close seats in order to swap out all the Tea Party Senators for Moderate Republicans, for example.
True. Although obviously there are exceptions (Cruz, for example).
Not sure how that undermines my point though, which is that even Senators are forced rightward by the primary threats.
**What can moderate Republicans do to get their party back? **
Leave the Republican Party, join the Democratic Party, and get it over with!
I don’t know that much about Cruz, but is he comparable to O’Donnell? The point is that House members can be pushed much further to the right than Senators without affecting the make-up of the House. There is more of a self-correcting mechanism in the Senate since a Senator has to govern more form the center than most House members have to in order to retain their seats.
If those were the only choices, then sure. But that’s not the choice they face. At the moment, the longer this goes on, the worse it looks for the Tea Party. So as I see the calculus, the Democrats could help the Republicans cut their losses only to see moderates primaried out or they can let them continue to bleed, let the moderates get primaried out anyway, and perhaps increase their odds in the general election. Why let a good crisis go to waste?
He is unlike O’Donnell insofar as he is qualified and capable. He is like her insofar as he upset a more moderate establishment candidate, theoretically making the general election harder to win. Though Texas would probably have elected a Republican ham sandwich in that election.
I agree about safe districts. I just don’t think that’s the main mechanism in play, because whatever factor is driving this also seems to be affecting the Senate quite a bit.
I don’t entirely follow this, which I’m sure is my fault.
I agree with the premise that the Tea Party is hurting the GOP electorally. But I think while increasing Democratic electoral success, they are making it harder to govern than a world in which there were relatively more but relatively more moderate Republicans. Hence, it could ultimately be in the Democrats interest to end the movement, even if it means some races go to moderate Republicans that would otherwise have gone to the Democrat over the crazy Tea Party type.
Vote democrat or green.
I see what you are saying. I think the difference is that we’re not seeing a flood of TPers in the Senate since they tend to lose in the general. Ted Cruz is, I believe, more of the exception than the rule. And the Senate Republicans aren’t beholden to Cruz (plus other TP types) as the House members seem to be to the TPers in their caucus.
As for the OP, the only way to win the party back is for more moderate Republicans to become more active, in larger numbers, in the primaries. Low overall turnout means disproportionately high turnout for the hard right types.
Sure, I agree with you, but I don’t think those are actually the available options. The Tea Party is making it harder to govern because there are too many of them and because of local primary challenges, it is very difficult to peel moderates off the Tea Party bandwagon. The Democrats might want to make deals with moderate Republicans to make governing possible in the short term. But these deals only make the moderates more susceptible to TP primary challenges. If the Tea Party will punish the moderates who make such deals, then the Democrats might have to deal with a Tea Party replacement after the next election. So it may be that Democrats would be trading away longer term prospects for short term governability. Better to let the TP destroy itself.
I imagine the Democrats want either primary challenges to be unsuccessful or to flip a Republican seat altogether. One way to do this is to let the Tea Party continue to discredit itself among non-members. But if they do deals and the bleeding stops, then moderate Republicans become more vulnerable to challenges by an organization that has not yet reached rock bottom.
I’m not saying that the Democrats should never do a deal. There are other considerations here, like WIC, SNAP, and all of the things they believe are legitimate operations of government. But they don’t exactly need to rush too much. There is room to make the Republicans suffer quite a lot more.
A caucus revolt with a challenge to the Speakership after the next election is probably the only practical way to force the party back into the hands of the moderates. IMO the moderate caucus should look outside their current leadership and rally around a senior RINO like Chris Smith. And the Dems would be smart to keep out of this civil war entirely. Sure it would be a hoot to watch, but one whiff of that and the GOP will dig in, even if it means sticking with the crazy caucus.
Sure, the 2020 census and resultant redistricting are going to force a major change on the Republican party anyway. Still, it’s the damage a Tea Party enabled by moderates can wreak over the next 9 years that we should be concerned about.
I don’t disagree that there is a difference between moderate republicans and the Tea Party. But it’s worth pointing out that there is overlap between the two.
It’s entirely possible to be a moderate Republican that is pro-choice, pro-SSM, etc and also be a Tea Party person because of a desire to reduce spending and debt.
I think many on the left assume “Tea Party” = Extreme Right winger and use the terms interchangeably. This isn’t correct. The Tea Party as I understand it is about fiscal issues like spending and debt. It’s got nothing to do with social issues.
There may certainly be overlap in ideological labels. But in this case, what I think we are about is who you actually vote for.
I don’t know. Ted Cruz. Mike Lee. Rand Paul. Marco Rubio. Ron Johnson. That’s only five Senators, but that’s not wildly off from the proportion of Tea Partiers in the House.
And I’m not sure I would say the Senate is less beholden to them than the House. Individual Senators wield far more power than individual House members.
True. But they also have to deal with each other for longer, so we might expect to see more logrolling. The Senate is traditionally more “collegial” for just this reason. Ted Cruz is an exception not so much because of his Tea Party beliefs but because his grandstanding intransigence signals that he does not really value working relationships with his colleagues very much.
There’s your problem.
Your idea of the TP isn’t what defines the overall movement. The TP in general is all about social issues.
Just taking Rand Paul, he didn’t “primary” anyone. The guy he succeeded decided not to run (in fact Paul said he would not challenge him if he did run).
Marco Rubio strikes me not so much a TPer as someone using the TP for his own purposes.
What’s the story behind Lee and Johnson?
Point being, the TP made the House more Republican (all those TPers who swept in in 2010), but it made the Senate more Democratic. If it weren’t for the TPers (ie, the Christine O’Donnells), the Senate would be majority Republican (or it would have been in 2010).
And then the GOP never wins another election.
Can you give even one example of a Tea Party politician who wants to reduce the debt? Because they tend to vote lockstep against any measure that would actually do that.
According to Grover Norquist:
Ouch.