primaries

After the March 2nd Texas primary, CNN proclaimed "Tea party changes tone, but not outcome of Texas primary." Politico's Jonathan Martin asks, "Is the tea party movement a paper tiger?" Locally, a San Angelo, Texas paper framed the result as "GOP incumbents held seats against Tea Party."

This is a classic straw man, and a dramatic misreading of the tea party's political objectives. 

Somehow, national media types got it into their heads that the tea party movement was the magic elixer for the kinds of unknown, underfunded and largely unskilled candidates who run in every race to claim the mantle of "tea party candidate" and knock off incumbents. A perusal of the Texas results at the Congressional level shows that the over/under for random, unknown unchallengers (a/k/a "tea party candidates") to incumbents was about 14%. This is basically the "none of the above" vote that materializes in every primary. When a prohibitive frontrunner has a semi-credible challenger, the frontrunner usually wins 70-30. Even when the challenger is unknown or unacceptable, 15 or 20 percent is doable. Convicted felon Lyndon LaRouche got that in some Democratic primaries against Bill Clinton in '96. 

Beyond that, the subtext is also that the tea party empowers uniquely conservative candidates, with Rubio/Crist as the model for every primary in the country. 

Again, no. 

It's clear that there is a lot more primary activity than there was in '06 and '08, largely because the prospects of getting elected as a Republican this year are so good. And in those primaries, proclaiming oneself a "tea party candidate" is about as fashionable as proclaiming oneself a "social media expert."

Going state by state and district by district, the case for conservative ascendancy in primaries is muddled at best. For every Rubio/Crist, there is a Mark Kirk walk-in-the-park. The '08 primaries showed that Republican primary voters are if nothing else pragmatic. 

A few basic misconceptions underlie the expectation that the more conservative the primary candidate, the better their chances are at winning. And the main one is that conservatives are uniquely advantaged this year because the tea parties show the party is moving right. 

This notion would require one to believe that the grassroots base of the GOP -- not its leaders, but its base -- was somehow un-conservative prior to '09 and '10. There's no evidence for that. Fueled by Rush Limbaugh and talk radio, 1994 was a conservative year. In fact, 1994 probably marked the end of the shift in the ascendancy of conservatives over moderates in Republican grassroots politics, a shift that started with Goldwater. Ever since '94, the ideological change within the Republican Party has been marginal at best.

What has changed in the last two years, is that Republicans are now unshackled from having to defend the Bush Administration and the mood of the country, and inside the Republican Party in particular, has grown more solidly anti-establishment. Those changes alone can explain the emergence of the tea party movement. 

While the case for conservative ascendancy in primaries is muddled, what isn't muddled is this: run as the milquetoast candidate of the arrogant establishment, and you lose. 

Practically every electorally relevant example points in this direction. 

NY-23? Check. 

Florida Senate? Check.

Massachusetts? Check. 

Texas Governor? Check. 

In Texas, the tea party candidate was not Debra Medina. It was Rick Perry, whose political fortunes were revived around the Tax Day tea parties last year. That points to a movement that is much more broadly relevant than the marginal nutjob candidacies that media is holding up as an example of the movement's failures. I know that one can point to Medina strength among the organizers -- and I've certainly played up the role Ron Paul's brigades have played in that effort -- but there is a convincing case that the rank-and-file attendees and their compatriots who followed from the radio dial or Fox News were solidly with Perry. And that's who matters when delivering votes in a primary, as opposed to a straw poll. 

But more importantly, the movement was aligned against Kay Bailey Hutchison, who barely disguised her sense of entitlement at holding not one, but two statewide offices. Strike one was trying to elbow aside Perry with a blatant "It's my turn" appeal not to run again, and then going ahead with a challenge. Strikes two and three were the Texas Two-Step around resigning her office, which, quelle surprise, will likely end up with Hutchison holding on to public office against her word. 

The KBH fall is of a piece with the staggering fall of "All About Charlie" Crist, who ran on a sense of entitlement before he finished the job voters elected him to do. Only a few words need to be said about Charlie Crist: pride before the fall. 

And NY-23 was a similar case of an arrogant establishment attempting to oppose its will against that of primary voters, and getting pwned in the process. 

Do you see a pattern here? 

Yes, each of these cases was one of a "conservative" beating a "moderate" -- but each also had the essential ingredient of a particularly noxious stench of self-entitlement on the part of the losers. 

As ever, public servants need to place the emphasis on the latter part of that title: servant. Those advantaged by a long career of winning elections need to be particularly humble and even servile to the will of the electorate, especially in this environment. Votes cannot be assumed. They must be earned. 

There is no easy template for tea party victory in a Republican primary. Saying you are Marco Rubio does not make you Marco Rubio. Rubio's success is due as much to Crist's arrogance and the movement-like aura Rubio has been able to build around himself as it is to a simple ideological contrast. Those whose job it is to run and win elections quickly learn that attributes -- those pesky personal qualities like honesty, integrity, intelligence, and authenticity -- matter a whole lot more than issues, even in primaries. This is not diminish the importance of principle but to acknowledge the reality that it alone is not enough, and having a good, plausible candidate, campaign, and message still matters a whole lot. 

I've often wondered why some politicians feel so compelled to play the game within the standard two party system?

One thing I believe will be accelerating for the near future is the disintermediation of political direction from centralized authority to individuals and candidates.  This is a product both of technology, and the decline of traditional media and traditional party "leadership" to impose discipline. As we've seen, some in the DC GOP establishment seem quite offended that party members reach their own conclusions.

The wired world is a world where party members are far more likely to figure out "the score" on an officeholder, and it will be far more difficult to "talk the talk" in one's home state when one hasn't "walked the walk" in DC.

The first victim of this phenomena was CT Senator Joe Lieberman in 2006. No matter how often he had supported Democrats on other issues; the rank and file CT Democratic party saw his support for the Iraq War as a dealbreaker and he lost his primary.

Lieberman is still in the Senate because he took the advice of his mentor John Droney and ran a 3rd party race; correctly perceiving that in such a "blue state" the Republicans would not seriously contest the general election. But given that Lieberman won by 10 points, it's not clear to me even a full bore Republican effort would have been successful, and the greater risk was throwing the election to squishy Ned Lamont.

Joe Lieberman is not the first or last politician whose views, while palatable to voters in general, have moved where their party will not travel.  Oddly, the Lieberman lesson was lost on two other Senators in risk of losing Democratic primaries---Arlen Specter and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Arlen Specter thrived for decades under the rubric of being "socially liberal, fiscally conservative". or, at least moderate. The stimulus vote ripped this meme to shreds and left him easy pickens to any credible Republican who filed for a primary, in this case,Pat Toomey saw his opportunity and took it.       

Arlen Specter thought he had greener pastures as a Democrat, but now he had decades of votes in favor of Republican bills and nominees to defend. Not the least being the AUMF vote on Iraq. So unless the Democrats muscled all the serious challengers out of the way, Specter was facing serious trouble.

Delaware County Congressman Joe Sestak wasn't dissuaded (hard to browbeat those career military men) and the primary between him and Specter is already on the ugly side.

I think Specter is going to lose this primary. His prior support for George W. Bush is going to be toxic. A disproportionate number of Democratic primary voters are in metro Pittsburgh, where Specter ran weakly in both the 2004 primary and general. Sestak is an unknown there now; that won't last. Maybe the huge black vote in Philadelphia turns out for Specter in a '10 primary;he garned little of it against a weak general election opponent in '04. And Specter's support among moderates in the SEPA suburbs and the "T" is likely to erode if he tries a slash and burn against Sestak; who is a Philly suburbanite and not some raving lefty.

The only way for Specter to win a Democratic primary is to tack his policies far to the left. So if he wins, then he hands Pat Toomey the issue of whether Pennsylvania is well served by a political chameleon. Not that a Republican is a sure thing in 2010 PA, but against a self-serving DC insider, well, it starts looking a lot better. And Toomey will be the "nice guy" in the race having avoided the intermural blood match.

What if Arlen had run independent?  I think he had enough residual strength among voters who don't vote in either primary to win, plus suburban/small city PA is a bigger chunk of that electorate.than the urban dominated Democrats or the rural dominated GOP. Plus, the fear of letting a vocal conservative like Toomey in the Senate would have put a damper on Democratic funding and recruitment. Could Specter have navigated the path of being an "Obama Republican"?  Not sure he'd be worse off now for having tried; and he could grab the mantle of being too concerned about policy to worry about party politics.

So, we find a party switch didn't work out so well for a Republican who was too liberal. So how is staying in her party working for a somewhat conservative Democrat? Not so well.

Kirsten Gillibrand's misfortune was to be appointed to the Senate as an upstate ticket balancer to liberal Harlem Democrat Governor David Paterson.Paterson's standing has crashed and dragged Gillibrand with it.

Gillibrand was a pro-Second Amendment; anti-bailout; border security Blue Dog. At least she was when representing a Republican leaning upstate district. Since joining the Upper Chamber she's been reeducated to modify her views to appease liberal downstate Democrats.

And she shouldn't have bothered. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, a liberal from Manhattan's "silk Stocking" district, has all but announced her primary bid and tied with her in the polls. And don't think anyone who has the Citicorp HQ in her district won't be able to raise cash at will.

Gillibrand's strength and weakness is she is viewed as "the upstate senator".  Upstate NY thinks--correctly--it is the forgotten child in NY State politics.  But it cast about 45% of the vote in an off-year general election. An upstate Democrat is well positioned to win a two way statewide race given the inevitable Democratic pluralities out of the City.

But an upstate candidate is poorly positioned to win a contested nomination. Over 50% of Democratic primary votes are cast in the City, and another 20% in the suburbs. There are very few parts of the City (the 9th CD; the 13th CD; some legislative districts in Queens) where a Democrat of Gillibrand's background is going to be well received.  As long as Maloney can frame this race as the NYC liberal against the less reliable girl from Albany, she is going to win this primary...since Gillibrand will need a virtually unanimous vote upstate to offset NYC.  And , barring sudden interest by a serious Republican--Maloney wins the general election.    

Let's assume the Republicans run someone akin to a John Spencer or a Howard Mills.  And let's assume Gillibrand did a Lieberman. I doubt the Republican could garner 20% of the statewide vote under this scenario; since I think Gillibrand pulls from their regional upstate base.

Now let's assume Upstate Democrats stuck with Gillibrand. Under these circumstances she'd just need to cobble together enough soft Republicans and independents in the suburbs and outer boroughs to win. (Hmm, Bloomberg and Giuliani endorsements?) . I think there's an easier path for her to get 42% in a general election than 50% in a Democratic primary. Especially since there already is a centrist 3rd Party (the Independence Party) which is guaranteed a ballot spot for the '10 NYS general election. 

I think that centrists of both parties are going to have to come to grips with the reality that if they want to stay in office, they will have to do it themselves. It's better to stay in office with the "cup of Joe" then to be tossed out trying to be the partisan your record proves you are not. 

Perhaps MA State Treasurer Tim Cahill, planning a independent candidacy against embattled Obama clone Gov. Deval Patrick, is the start of a trend?   

 We've been told that Republicans don't make moderates feel very welcome. How welcome are the Democrats under Obama, Reid and Pelosi?...especially if you are a moderate from a blue state? 

This is instructive. The D-Trip is not afraid to play in primaries:

As the cycle wages on and Republicans appear more vulnerable this November, those extraordinary circumstances have become the norm.

The addition of Iraq veteran Jon Powers to the DCCC’s Red to Blue program last week made the New York House candidate the latest to gain the national party’s fundraising assistance.

Over the previous month, the committee used Red to Blue to back another New York candidate, as well as candidates in open primaries in Alaska, Arizona and Louisiana. It had previously added a candidate in Michigan in March.

Only six races with competitive Democratic primaries are currently listed as “toss-up” or “lean Democratic” by the Cook Political Report. The DCCC has now picked a side in all six of them.

One of the raps against the NRCC in the spring special slaughter is that they refused to support the more electable (or less unelectable) candidates in LA-6 and MS-1. Nobody likes to take a heavy handed approach when you have two or more competitive candidates running. As a former party committee operative, I can tell you that the decision to weigh in for a candidate, or not to weigh in at all, heavily shapes perceptions of the national GOP among grassroots activists, rarely for the better.

But people don't like to get beat either, especially when the defeat was preventable. And you've got to weigh that.