Tea Party Takeover

[Valin]

National Journal: Anti-establishment Republicans could score upsets in four Senate battlegrounds.

Josh Kraushaar

5/15/12

 

For those who think Sen. Richard Lugar’s defeat was primarily attributable to running a weak campaign or for living outside of Indiana for decades, I’ve got one number in dissent: 38 percent. That’s the shockingly low percentage of the vote the six-term senator won this month, with a margin of defeat larger than any other senator in a primary over the past three decades. That’s a 2006 Rick Santorum-like loss, for a politician who had been accustomed to coasting to landslide victories. It suggests that even if Lugar had run a top-notch campaign, he would have been susceptible to forces outside of his control: a Republican electorate looking for new faces and more-outspoken conservative leadership.

 

Lugar’s landslide loss is a sign of the maturation of the tea party, a loosely defined confederation of conservative activists in 2010 who have banded together and threaten to have a defining impact in 2012. Because they’re not conducting mass protests, Occupy Wall Street-style, many pundits naïvely presumed their strength had subsided. But in reality, the masses of disaffected conservatives are a sleeping giant.

 

Antiestablishment GOP candidates have a chance to score Senate-primary upsets in Nebraska, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin. In three of those four races, the Republican nominee would start off as the heavy favorite in the general election—a major difference from the 2010 GOP primaries fought in more Democratic-friendly states, such as Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada.

 

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(RELATED: Fischer Wins Senate GOP Primary in Neb.)

 

The other recent sign that all is not well with the GOP establishment took place last weekend in Wisconsin, where former Gov. Tommy Thompson performed weakly at the state party convention, getting eliminated from endorsement contention on the second ballot (with just 18 percent of the vote). It was a glaring rebuke for Thompson, who ruled the party’s roost throughout the 1990s as governor but looks like he’s lost his luster with his state’s Republican voters. Club for Growth-backed former Rep. Mark Neumann looks best-positioned to capture grassroots momentum, though two other candidates are also looking to claim the conservative mantle (hedge fund manager Eric Hovde and state Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, who boasts ties to Gov. Scott Walker).

 

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Take a close look at the scoreboard: A well-respected senator suffering a historic primary loss, a once-popular former four-term governor being rebuked by party activists, a Republican establishment favorite losing despite a significant organizational advantage, and another one at serious risk of being defeated. If the tea party hasn’t already won, I don’t know what victory looks like.