REPUBLICANS HAVE PRIMARIES AMONGST EACH OTHER TOO

This morning a Republican Party site is moaning about how primaries threaten their chances to win. Captain Kangaroo is worried about the religionists who hate Giuliani (and all the other candidates) taking their marbles and going how, about a quarter of the electorate.

Along with the splintering rhetoric from James Dobson and others, it shows an immaturity and a complete rejection of the primary process. It's a form of extortion; select a candidate despite the voters' own preferences, or they walk out of the party. If the party nominates someone who cannot win a majority among their own voters without the threat of extortion, what chance do they have in the general election? None.

The silliness extends to the general election. On the radio shows I do, I hear the same refrain I heard in 2006-- "We'll stay home and teach the party a lesson." What lesson-- that its allies are completely unreliable? That those who claim to speak for a majority would rather marginalize themselves and the rest of the agenda on the Right rather than accept the conclusion of the party's own voters in the primaries? That's not democracy, it's petulance. All elections are cost-benefit choices, at all levels. If people can't understand that much, they have no business leading any kind of political movement.

With "None of the Above" beating all the pathetic pygmies™ in every match up, the presidential race isn't what the wingnuts should be worrying about. They'll be lucky to win 5 states outside the Old Confederacy and it's unlikely they'll even win all the states that left the Union.

But where the GOP is likely to get slaughtered in in congressional races, perhaps by historic margins. People may not like Congress but when asked why, they are a lot more perceptive than TV talking heads give the credit for being. Most say Congress isn't functioning because of Republican obstructionism. And they don't like t one bit. Can the general feelings of anger and frustration and disgust with the GOP overcome years of careful incumbent-protective gerrymandering? If ever the Democrats had a perfect storm working for them, 2008 looks like the year. Only their own legendary and well-practiced lameness could hold them back.

Forget for a moment that as many as a dozen GOP incumbents-- and no Democrats-- are retiring, in many cases in vulnerable seats likely to be won by Democrats. The media has been all over that story. But last week Congressional Quarterly wrote about neraly a dozen Republican incumbents who may not even get to the general election due to serious primary challenges-- and in some cases, the very type of unity-shattering/defeat-guaranteeing brouhahahs feared by Mr. Kangaroo. The CQ story points out that "primary contests can be the only meaningful outlet for voter discontent in congressional districts that are gerrymandered, as so many are these days, to ensure that one party or the other will always win the general election." CQ fingers primaries against John Doolittle (CA-04), Mean Jean Schmidt (OH-02), and Ric Keller (FL-08) as the most likely to lead to Democratic take-overs. Here, though, are the 11 worst primary trouble spots for the Patry of Greed and Hatred:

California’s 4th District (Northeast-- Roseville, Rocklin)
2006 general election: Rep. John T. Doolittle (R) 49 percent, Charlie Brown (D) 46 percent, Dan Warren (Libertarian) 5 percent
2006 Republican primary: Doolittle 67 percent, J.M. “Mike” Holmes 33 percent
2004 presidential: President George W. Bush (R) 61 percent, John Kerry (D) 37 percent

Doolittle, burdened by questions about his past ties to disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, barely avoided an upset in the 2006 general election after a series of easy victories. The ethics questions haven’t gone away. And with Brown-- a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who came close last year in his first bid for public office-- staging a rematch bid, some Republicans want Doolittle to step aside and let someone else run.
At least three Republicans are gearing up for attempts to push Doolittle to the sidelines in the 2008 primary. Officially filed to run are Auburn City Councilman Mike Holmes, whom Doolittle dismissed rather easily in the 2006 primary, and Iraq War veteran Eric Egland, who campaigned for Doolittle last year but decided to run against him this time. State Rep. Ted Gaines also is considering launching his own campaign for the GOP nomination.

Colorado’s 5th District (Central-- Colorado Springs)
2006 general election: Doug Lamborn (R) 60 percent, Jay Fawcett (D) 40 percent
2006 Republican primary: Lamborn 27 percent, Jeff Crank 25 percent, Bentley B. Rayburn 17 percent (remainder split among three other candidates)
2004 presidential: Bush 66 percent, Kerry 33 percent

The contest for the 2008 GOP nomination will feature a rematch among the three leading candidates among the six who ran in the 2006 open-seat primary to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Joel Hefley: Lamborn, a longtime state legislator; Jeff Crank, a former vice president of the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce and former Hefley aide; and Rayburn, a retired Air Force general running in the district that is home to the Air Force Academy.

The second round may not be much prettier than the first. Lamborn in particular ran a hard-hitting campaign, with outside assistance from the national conservative political action group Club for Growth. He prevailed narrowly and left such hard feelings that outgoing incumbent Hefley declined to endorse him for the fall election, and Democrats touted Air Force veteran Fawcett’s upset bid in what is one of the nation’s most unshakable Republican strongholds.

It will be hard to outflank Lamborn on the political right: In the first eight months of this year, Lamborn sided with Republicans 99.2 percent of the time on House roll call votes that pitted most Republicans against most Democrats-- the highest “party unity” score among House Republicans this year.

So the race might be more about style than about issue positions. Lamborn again created a stir when he left a voice mail message with a Colorado couple, including a woman who was on Crank’s campaign payroll in 2006, that said in part that there would be “consequences” to a letter to the editor they wrote that was critical of the congressman. Lamborn, who said the letter was inaccurate, later apologized.

Florida’s 8th District (Central — most of Orlando)
2006 general election: Republican Rep. Ric Keller (R) 53 percent, Charlie Stuart (D) 46 percent
2006 Republican primary: Keller 72 percent, Elizabeth Doran 28 percent
2004 presidential: Bush 55 percent, Kerry 44 percent

Keller, when he first ran for the House in 2000, pledged to serve no more than eight years in Congress. But after winning a fourth House term last year, Keller dismissed that pledge, calling it a “mistake” and announcing plans to run for re-election in 2008.

So while Democrats plan another run at the seat in the general election-- after holding Keller to a modest 53 percent in 2006-- the incumbent’s decision to run again has drawn at least one major critic from his own party who is challenging him in the 2008 primary: Republican lawyer and conservative radio host Todd W. Long. He began waging a primary campaign against Keller last November and is making the broken term-limit pledge a central issue in his campaign.

Long believes he has enough name recognition from his radio stint and will be able to raise enough money to seriously challenge the incumbent. But Keller possesses not only the advantage of incumbency, but has demonstrated himself to be a strong fundraiser in his own right.

Georgia’s 10th District (Northeast-- Athens; part of Augusta)
July 2007 special election: Paul Broun (R) 50.4 percent, Jim Whitehead (R) 49.6 percent
2006 general election: Rep. Charlie Norwood (R) 67 percent, Terry Holley (D) 33 percent
2006 Republican primary: None
2004 presidential: Bush 65 percent, Kerry 34 percent

A stunning upset is how many Georgia Republicans regard Broun’s July special election win to succeed Norwood, who died of cancer just more than three months after easily winning a seventh House term in November 2006. But Broun, who had previously run for congressional seats three times without success, is not getting a free pass in 2008: State House Majority Whip Barry Fleming filed paperwork in August to establish a campaign for next year’s Republican primary.

Fleming was initially regarded as a possible candidate to succeed Norwood but he threw his support behind Whitehead, the consensus favorite of the Republican Party establishment. Broun trailed Whitehead in the single-ballot June special primary and barely edged out a Democratic contender for the second slot in an all-Republican runoff. But Broun, campaigning as an outsider and building up a huge vote advantage in his Athens-Clarke County home base, slipped by Whitehead in the runoff.

Fleming and some other Republicans argue that Democratic crossover votes contributed to Broun’s win. Voters do not register by party in Georgia and all were permitted to participate in the Republican versus Republican runoff.

Indiana’s 5th District (East central-- part of Indianapolis and suburbs)
2006 general election: Rep. Dan Burton (R) 65 percent, Katherine Fox Carr (D) 31 percent
2006 Republican primary: Burton 84 percent, Clayton L. “C.L. Jim” Alfred 9 percent
2004 presidential: Bush 71 percent, Kerry 28 percent

Republican physician John McGoff, a former coroner in Marion County (Indianapolis), is challenging Burton in the GOP primary next May, giving the staunchly conservative incumbent one of the only serious challenges he has faced over a career that has now stretched to 13 terms.

McGoff, who has questioned some of Burton’s campaign spending practices, appears to be positioning himself as a political outsider while portraying the incumbent as an entrenched Washington insider. When he announced in February that he intended to stage his primary challenge, McGoff said district residents are “tired of career politicians in Washington who are out of touch with the voters back home” and that they “want integrity restored to Congress.”

Maryland’s 1st District (East-- Eastern Shore, part of Anne Arundel County)
2006 general election: Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R) 69 percent, Jim Corwin (R) 31 percent
2006 Republican primary: None
2004 presidential: Bush 62 percent, Kerry 36 percent

Gilchrest, one of the more moderate House Republicans, faces a serious challenge from the right in the February 2008 Republican primary, with state Sen. Andrew Harris drawing substantial funding for a challenger and gaining key endorsements.

But conservatives-- long put off by Gilchrest’s sympathies with the environmentalist movement and more recently the distance he has placed between himself and President Bush on Iraq-- have tried before and failed to nudge him from his seat representing a district that takes in Maryland’s Eastern Shore and two geographically disparate region west of the Chesapeake Bay, one north of Baltimore and the other near Annapolis.

A big part of Gilchrest’s appeal over a House career that has reached nine terms is the common-man image projected by the former schoolteacher, house painter, forest ranger and Vietnam War veteran. But he has critics within party ranks in a district that leans strongly Republican, with Harris challenging the incumbent on his fiscal record, saying that he has voted numerous times against stripping earmarks from appropriations bills.

Harris has been endorsed by seven of eight state senators who represent parts of the district and more than 10 members of the state House of Delegates, including Minority Leader Anthony O’Donnell. He also is back by former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, who is scheduled to attend an Oct. 18 fundraiser to benefit Harris’ campaign.
There are two other candidates in the race: lawyer John Leo Walter and defense expert Joe Arminio.

North Carolina’s 3rd District (East – Jacksonville, part of Greenville, Outer Banks)

2006 general election: Rep. Walter B. Jones (R) 69 percent, Craig Weber (D) 31 percent
2006 Republican primary: None
2004 presidential: Bush 68 percent, Kerry 32 percent

Jones, who represents the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in the heavily Republican 3rd District, in 2005 became one of the first Republicans to break with Bush on Iraq, stating his belief that the nation had engaged in an unnecessary war based on flawed intelligence. Since then, he has continued to oppose the administration’s Iraq policies: Jones in February was one of 17 House Republicans to vote against Bush’s troop “surge,” and in April was one of two GOP members to vote for a Democratic-sponsored war spending bill that included a timeline to redeploy U.S. troops from Iraq.

This position, contrary to that held by most congressional Republican, is not without risk in a district that gave Bush more than two-thirds of its 2004 presidential vote. Jones avoided a primary challenge in 2006, but will not in 2008, with Onslow County Commissioner Joe McLaughlin-- an Army veteran-- charging that Jones has abandoned conservative principles. “Walter Jones is not the same man we sent to Washington with the Contract with America,” McLaughlin says on his campaign Web site, referring to the campaign platform on which Republicans ran in 1994, when Jones first was elected to Congress.

VoteVets.org, a group of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts that opposes Bush’s handling of the Iraq War, launched a radio spot commending Jones’ voting record, an ad McLaughlin decried as “an insult to our brave men and women fighting on the front lines in the global war on terror.” McLaughlin added in a statement that Jones’ voting record was “the most shameful chapter in his increasingly bizarre and disappointing political career.”

It will be the first Republican primary challenge for Jones since he won the seat. In 1992 he lost the Democratic primary for the state’s 1st Congressional District seat that his father, conservative Democratic Rep. Walter B. Jones Sr., had held since 1965. The junior Jones changed his party affiliation the next year and won the 3rd District seat, joining in the huge Class of 1994 that boosted the GOP into the House majority.

Ohio’s 2nd District (Eastern Cincinnati and suburbs; Portsmouth)

2006 general election: Rep. Jean Schmidt (R) 50 percent, Victoria Wulsin (D) 49 percent
2006 Republican primary: Schmidt 48 percent, Bob McEwen 43 percent, Deborah A. Kraus 6 percent
2004 presidential: Bush 64 percent, Kerry 36 percent

It is hardly a surprise that serious challengers have emerged for both the 2008 Republican primary and the general elections in this district. Schmidt’s strongly conservative politics come with a bit of a hard-edged tone that a number of voters in both parties seem to find off-putting. Although the generally conservative nature of this southern Ohio electorate is reflected in Bush’s landslide numbers there in 2004, Schmidt just narrowly defeated both Republican and Democratic rivals in a 2005 special election and the regularly scheduled 2006 election.

After deflecting comeback bids by Republican former Rep. McEwen in both of those contests, Schmidt’s 2008 primary opponent is Republican Phil Heimlich, a former commissioner in Hamilton County; a plurality of district residents live in that county, in the portion of Cincinnati and its eastern suburbs that are located in the 2nd.

Looking forward to November, Democratic physician Wulsin is seeking a second try after her 2006 near-miss, but faces primary opposition of her own from lawyer Steve Black.

Texas’ 4th District (Northeast-- Sherman, Texarkana, Paris)
2006 general election: Rep. Ralph M. Hall (R) 64 percent, Glenn Melancon (D) 33 percent
2006 Republican primary: None
2004 presidential: Bush 70 percent, Kerry 29 percent

After nearly a quarter-century of representing strongly conservative northeast Texas turf as one of the most conservative House Democrats, Hall made a seamless shift to the Republican Party prior to the 2004 election — a move he made after a Republican-drawn redistricting plan gave him many unfamiliar constituents and generated at least the threat of a serious GOP challenge had he remained a Democrat.

Yet after coasting through the 2004 and 2006 elections as a Republican, the party-switch welcome may be wearing off. Hall is drawing some intraparty opposition as he prepares to run for a 15th House term as the oldest member of the House (he will turn 85 in May). He has drawn three primary challengers: Kathy Seei, the former mayor of Frisco, and businessmen Gene Christensen and Kevin George.

The Democratic House takeover that resulted from the 2006 election cost Hall his chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality. Hall currently is ranking Republican on the full Science and Technology Committee.

Texas’ 14th District (Northern Gulf Coast-- Victoria, Galveston)
2006 general election: Rep. Ron Paul (R) 60 percent, Shane Sklar (D) 40 percent
2006 Republican primary: Paul 78 percent, Cynthia Sinatra 22 percent
2004 presidential: Bush 67 percent, Kerry 33 percent

Republican Ron Paul is a longshot White House hopeful who is conducting a House re-election campaign at the same time-- a position analogous to that of Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich on the Democratic side.
This dual campaigning has brought Paul some criticism from local Republicans who contend he should be concentrating on his district’s concerns. But the challenge he appears likely to face in the 2008 Republican House primary has been even more strongly fueled by his vote against 2002 Iraq War authorization and his subsequent fierce denunciations of U.S. policy in Iraq-- positions consistent with his long-stated libertarian views about avoiding foreign entanglements, but one at odds with most Republican activists.

Two Republicans have filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to prepare for primary campaigns against Paul: Chris Peden, an accountant and former officeholder in the Houston suburb of Friendswood, and Andy Mann, a former Democrat who has a background in information technology.

Utah’s 3rd District (Central-- part of Salt Lake County, Provo)
2006 general election: Rep. Chris Cannon (R) 58 percent, Christian Burridge (D) 32 percent, Jim Noorlander (Constitution) 9 percent
2006 Republican primary: Cannon 56 percent, John D. Jacob 44 percent
2004 presidential: Bush 77 percent, Kerry 20 percent

It appears six-term incumbent Cannon will have his third consecutive primary race, with at least two challengers stating they will challenge him for the nomination in one of the nation’s most overwhelmingly Republican-voting districts.

Cannon has been a magnet for intraparty challenges largely because he holds relatively moderate views on immigration that are similar to those held by President Bush: While calling for stronger border security,

Cannon has stated the nation’s economy needs immigrant labor and has favored a “guest worker” program that could provide legal status to many illegal immigrants. It is a stance that has drawn Cannon the wrath of the sizable constituency within Republican ranks that takes a hard-line position about cracking down on illegal immigration.

Jacob, a businessman who ran a vigorous challenge to Cannon in the 2006 campaign, has stepped aside for 2008. But the same isn’t true for Jason Chaffetz, a former chief of staff to Utah Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr-- who officially declared his candidacy Monday-- and David Leavitt, a businessman whose brother, Michael O. Leavitt, is the current secretary of Health and Human Services and is a former Utah governor. Another potential candidate is Merrill Cook, a Republican who represented Utah’s 2nd District from 1997 to 2001, who said he will decide whether to run by the end of the year, depending on the amount of commitments he gets.