GOP Primaries

A Tale of Two Brackets

It is an axiom in presidential politics that national polls are meaningless (ask Rudy Giuliani) -- the states select party nominees, and the states elect the president.  However, since large slices of the political establishment buy into national polls, a candidate's standing there affects his or her ability to raise money and gain attention that can be translated into votes in the critical early primaries.

The national polls fall into something larger and deeper, though.  The rank a candidate holds in national polls is far less important than which of two brackets the candidate falls into: Bracket 1) the top three who net double digits, and Bracket 2) everybody else.

[Promoted - I think the Right would do well to fix its own house first.  Internicine warfare is unfortunate....and unfortunately necessary.   The GOP needs to clean its own house before it can ever be trusted with the people's House.   That doesn't just mean primarying Republicans, though; it also means Republican Senators and Representatives need to start encouraging and supporting primary challengers.   Until they put their personal political capital behind reform, they're just status quo Republicans - Jon Henke]

The process of truly remaking the GOP into a party that the grassroots can be proud of again requires a step that was more complicated in 2006 when there was still a majority to worry about:  cheering the electoral confrontation of Republican Members of Congress currently doing more harm than good to the conservative cause.

That inevitably becomes a debatable filter and people can disagree about  the primary cause of the party's 2006 losses, ranging from over-spending, the Iraq War, and the stench of assorted scandals.  Regardless of the ultimate ranking of those problems, however, zeal among some significant Republicans in Congress to continue obnoxious spending practices is not only bad policy, it was - and is - a significant annoyance to the conservative grassroots.

As such, it is difficult to do anything but applaud the increasing critical mass in a primary challenge to uber-purveyor of pork, Don Young.  The Club for Growth has its critics on the right at  times given their aggressive efforts in some Republican primary contests.  Yet, their vigorous opposition to Young is a welcome sign in the bigger picture of the spring-cleaning the still needs to occur in the Capitol Hill Republican Caucuses.