People's Pundit Daily
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Every
single Republican incumbent senator seeking re-election in 2014 won
their nomination. It's the first time since 2008. (Photo: AP).
U.S.
Why Republican Incumbent Senators Dodged The Tea Party Bullet
Every
single Republican incumbent senator seeking re-election in 2014 won
their nomination. It’s the first time since 2008. (Photo: AP)
With the exception of Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran, a race we initially rated a “Toss-Up” going into the first primary, PPD’s 2014 Senate Map Predictions model favored each and every one of them. Sen. Cochran still has woes in the form of conservative challenger Chris McDaniel, who narrowly defeated Cochran before losing the runoff election thanks to dubious, and likely fraudulent votes from liberal black voters.
So, how did this happen, particularly at a time when American voters consistently tell pollsters they want new blood in Washington?
Every second year political science student knows that incumbency wins. While Americans say they want to “throw the bums” out, the “bums” more often than not do not include their own representative or senator. Still, in 2014 there seemed to be a stronger-than-usual anti-incumbent sentiment, particularly among Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters. In fact, the historically low favorability numbers for the party are due in large part from the number of conservative voters who say they have an unfavorable opinion of the GOP.
From the beginning, the Republican Establishment knew their guys would have trouble on their right flanks, and they fought back.
“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” the Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told The New York Times at the onset of the cycle. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
McConnell was both right and wrong.
While “they” don’t have a nominee this cycle, nowhere did a Republican incumbent senator “crush” their challenger, let alone “everywhere.” With the exception of McConnell’s own race, where challenger Matt Bevin imploded and was damaged by a cock-fighting story, Republican incumbents were very beatable.
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts won by a less than impressive seven-point margin on Tuesday against physician Milton Wolfe. In Texas, Sen. John Cornyn couldn’t even break 60 percent in a deeply conservative state that once viewed him as the most conservative senator in the country. Neither could South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a powerful leader in the aggressive foreign policy wing of the party. And, last but not least, we have demonstrated it is a fact that Republican voters alone preferred McDaniel over Thad Cochran.
As unimpressive as all of this may seem, they will be heading back to Washington, while the conservative challengers are, well, losers.
And here’s why.
Nearly 40 percent of the state voted against Sen. John Cornyn, who faced seven other primary challengers. Graham had six challengers, who together garnered nearly 44 percent of the vote. Senator Roberts, who had the second worst showing, had more than half — 52 percent — vote against him, but the vote split between Wolfe and two other challengers. By raw vote totals, Roberts actually performed worse than Cochran, but considering Cochran’s tactics, it is fair to say he performed the worst.
It shouldn’t at all surprise observers that in the one race that the anti-incumbent forces coalesced around a single, viable candidate, they came the closest to defeated a sitting senator. “Tea Party” groups, for lack of a better term, have two challenges they have yet to address and, until they do, they will continue to lose primaries.
First, which is the point I am making above, is their inability to coalesce behind a single candidate. It is inherently fatal to the art of political messaging to have so many alternatives to the target you are attempting to draw a contrast with. It muddles the message that must be honed and delivered to voters with precision coherence.
Second, it is time for the Tea Party to somewhat disband and rebrand. I am going to make the argument no one has the courage to make, which is as follows:
The Tea Party, fair or unfair – and, just for the record I personally think it is unfair – has lost its usefulness because national Tea Party groups have lost their credibility with the American public. If you think the Republican Party is suffering from low favorability numbers, just look at the voters’ views of the Tea Party. There are more Republican and Republican-leaning voters who have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party, than there are conservative and Tea Party supporters who have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.
Now, it’s unquestionably true that the media has demonized the Tea Party, characterizing them in a grossly unfair light that paints their views as extreme. It is also true that — when pollsters focus only on the issues — more voters will identify with the positions held by the Tea Party than with the truly extreme position held by members of the Democratic Party. But none of that matters, because the Tea Party “movement” has evolved into national Tea Party organizations and, as a consequence, the face of the movement has evolved from town hall-meeting activists to national organizations that now have their own establishment.
But, most importantly, because of their deep unpopularity, they are no longer effective at combating attacks from either the Democratic Party or the GOP Establishment, if in fact they ever were. It was the local, community-based Tea Party groups, which the national groups often ignore, that generated all of the excitement and support for the movement and its candidates. In Oklahoma, national Tea Party groups got behind state Rep. T.W. Shannon, while outraged local Tea Party groups supported Rep. James Lankford. It became an Establishment Tea Party versus local Tea Party battle.
The national Establishment Tea Party lost, badly.
Still think I am wrong.
The only noteworthy incumbent to go down in defeat this cycle came from the House, not from the Senate where national Tea Party groups chose to spend the bulk of their money this cycle. Eric Cantor’s stunning defeat at the hands of Dave Brat offered the consulting class many lessons, but activists missed the most significant lesson of all.
Even though Brat himself acknowledged his strong grassroots support, there wasn’t a single nationwide Tea Party group backing Dave Brat. Laura Ingraham, a conservative talk radio host who backed Brat early on in the contest, openly criticized Jenny Beth Martin, the co-founder and national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, for not even bothering to return Brat’s phone calls during the campaign. Judson Phillips, of Tea Party Nation, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Times back in March, in which she argued for widespread Tea Party support in the race.
Fortunately for Brat and the citizens living in the 7th Congressional District, it never came, which prevented the Republican Establishment and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz from being able to paint Brat as the typical “extremist Tea Party” candidate.
The data and the election results are clear. If the Tea Party, which is still a powerful force in Republican politics, wants to offer the party a positive contribution, then they will take both of my points of argument as mana from Heaven. They need to step back, rebrand, and take more of a back seat to the local Tea Party groups. They must support the people the local groups have chosen to represent their communities, or even broker the selection process, rather than fracturing the anti-incumbent vote with their own hand-picked candidates.
Or, they could be stubborn and stay the course, and they will continue to lose both at the primary ballot box and in the battle for public opinion.
G.O.P. Senator and 3 Justices Prevail in Tennessee Election
NASHVILLE
— Tennessee voters backed Senator Lamar Alexander against a Tea Party
challenge and turned down an aggressive bid by conservatives and
business interests to oust three members of the State Supreme Court in
primaries on Thursday.
Mr.
Alexander’s victory in the Republican primary was another win for
establishment Republicans against Tea Party challengers. And the
decision to retain the justices was also a defeat for conservatives who
hoped to gain a majority on Tennessee’s highest court.
With
99 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Alexander led six other candidates
with 50 percent of the vote, The Associated Press said.
In
addition to backing Mr. Alexander, Republicans, as expected, nominated
another incumbent, Gov. Bill Haslam, who is running for re-election in
November’s general election.
In
securing a win, Mr. Alexander thwarted the final attempt by Tea Party
supporters to oust a Republican senator this year after challenges in
Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and South Carolina faltered. The year has
proved a marked contrast from 2010 and 2012, when Tea Party candidates
toppled Senators Robert F. Bennett of Utah and Richard G. Lugar of
Indiana, both Republicans.
The
victories of incumbent lawmakers this year helped deprive Democrats of
incendiary candidates they would prefer to face in November and raised
the chances of a Republican takeover of the Senate.
Mr.
Alexander, a former governor who was elected to the Senate in 2002,
knew he would be a target because of his long record of compromise and
deal making. And he faced an especially aggressive challenge from Joe
Carr, a state representative from Rutherford County, which is southeast
of Nashville.
Mr.
Carr assailed Mr. Alexander as too moderate for this state, which has
not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996, when Al
Gore, a Tennessean, was Bill Clinton’s running mate.
But
unlike some other Republican lawmakers who did little to prepare for
primary challenges, Mr. Alexander moved quickly to secure the backing of
Tennessee’s political apparatus, which helped deprive Mr. Carr and
other rivals of political oxygen.
The
hopes of Mr. Carr, who reported only $1.1 million in fund-raising, were
raised in June after a little-known college professor, David Brat,
stunned Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority
leader, in a primary. Mr. Brat had highlighted Mr. Cantor’s support for
granting some illegal immigrants legal status and enlisted the
conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham in his cause.
Mr. Carr also got help from Ms. Ingraham, and picked up the same playbook.
“When
Lamar Alexander says he ‘voted to end amnesty,’ he isn’t telling the
truth, again,” Mr. Carr said this week in a statement. “The truth is
Lamar Alexander betrayed Tennessee’s workers.”
But
it was not enough to defeat Mr. Alexander, a figure in Tennessee
politics for decades who once wore a plaid, flannel shirt and walked
more than 1,000 miles across the state while running for governor. In
his victory speech, he touted his ability to compromise, The A.P. said.
He told followers that if they wanted to make changes to health care and
spending, “we’re going to have to work with other people to get it
done.”
Tennessee
voters also rejected an effort to force three State Supreme Court
justices from the bench after conservatives sought to define them as too
liberal for the state.
Chief
Justice Gary R. Wade and Justices Cornelia A. Clark and Sharon G. Lee
all survived to win new eight-year terms on the state’s highest court,
maintaining a margin of about 56 percent to 44 percent, The A.P. said.
The
justices were all appointed by the governor at the time, Phil Bredesen,
a Democrat. Conservative groups targeted them for defeat in this
summer’s retention elections, which are normally pro forma votes.
Their
critics, including the Republican State Leadership Committee and
Americans for Prosperity, affiliated with Charles G. and David H. Koch,
mounted a high-profile campaign claiming the justices had been “soft on
crime” and hostile to business interests. The justices were also
criticized for obliquely supporting the Affordable Care Act because the
court in 2006 appointed a Democrat, Robert E. Cooper Jr., as state
attorney general; Mr. Cooper later refused to join a lawsuit challenging
the measure. (The court itself never ruled on a case concerning the
health law.)
The
justices, joined by many members of the state’s legal community, said
the attacks were baseless and raised more than $1 million, a formidable
sum in a state of modest television markets. Their opponents responded
by pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race.
Speaking
to supporters in Nashville after declaring victory, Justice Clark said,
“We have shown citizens of this state and other states that we can’t be
bought, that we want fair and impartial courts and that we do not want
any outside people messing in the judicial system in Tennessee.”
In an interview, she said she thought her victory might deter challenges to elected judges elsewhere.
“I
hope that the hard work that we have put into this will discourage
people from unfairly going after other justices,” she said.
The
leader of a political action committee that opposed the justices,
Tennessee Forum, said after the election on Thursday that the balloting
had placed the jurists on notice.
“For
probably the first time ever, the Supreme Court has been held
accountable to some degree,” said Susan Kaestner, the group’s president,
who said she celebrated that the election “wasn’t a rubber stamp.”
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