Former NRCC Head Tom Davis: "A Right-Centered Party Can't Be A Majority Nationally"

Inside-the-Beltway, in light of the 60,000 people who showed up for the Million Moron March this past weekend, wonderers and wondering whether the Republican Party will be able to pull back towards the mainstream or if they need to go through a period of out-and-out, full-blown insanity first, complete with secessionism, birthers, deathers, 10-ers... and historic losses at the polls.

As I pointed out last night after sitting on the phone with three of the most respected and competent pollsters in the country, the worst position for any member of Congress to be in in 2010 is to be seen as someone who has taken money from the health care and insurance industries and to have then opposed health care reform. That pretty much describes today's Republican Party. Combine that with wild-eyed extremism and even just perceived obeisance to media clowns like Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly and the 2010 scenario the Villagers keep likening to 1994 could have a lot more in common with 1934, where voters punished Republican pig-headed obstructionism and extremism by reducing their already meaningless minority in the Senate to 25 and in the House to 103 lunatics barking "socialist" at everything FDR proposed in an attempt to rescue the country from decades of a corporate/GOP economic agenda.

Yesterday's Hill attempted to hold onto the victory-belongs-to-Republicans song they're always singing while still recognizing that not everything is pointing quite in that direction. Like the rest of the Villagers, they're looking at Senate races and scratching their heads, wondering what hat the GOP plans to pull the magic double digit win from. The only clear cut GOP Senate primary is in Pennsylvania where the party is stuck with crazy right-wing extremist Pat Toomey because the Republican incumbent left the party and declared himself a Democrat.

The weakened party infrastructure and optimism about 2010 have crowded Senate races and produced just one clear primary in a dozen key contests. And, in several cases, local officials and activists are bristling at the direction the national GOP has taken in those races.

Contests in Colorado, New Hampshire, Florida, Kentucky and California have featured local Republicans speaking out against national party involvement.

Republican Party chairmen in Colorado and New Hampshire have spoken out against the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s (NRSC) involvement after the committee bought up website domains for Colorado Lt. Gov. Jane Norton (R) and hosted a fundraiser for former Granite State Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R).

Both races feature other less-prominent and less-hyped primary candidates who nonetheless have significant standing-- a pattern that is covering many other GOP Senate primaries... The NRSC also has drawn heat for endorsing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in his contested Senate primary with former state House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Another notable example is Kentucky, where the NRSC is hosting a fundraiser for Secretary of State Trey Grayson later this month, despite eye surgeon Rand Paul’s traction in the money chase and recent polling.

... Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) spokesman Eric Schultz said the GOP’s primaries will lead to jockeying for social-conservative votes, which could come back to haunt it in centrist states.
“The disarray surfacing in the Republican ranks in these states is symptomatic of an ideological battle that could and likely will impact their ability to win a general election,” Schultz said.

As the DSCC has found out in recent cycles, there is often consternation when the national party gets involved in state politics. The question is usually how significant the detractors are.

Most of the GOP primaries involve reputable conservative primary opponents who could, at least, do some damage before the general election. On most of them, though, the jury will be out for a while.

Buck and Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier will oppose Norton in Colorado. In Ohio, car dealer Tom Ganley threatened to spend upward of $7 million against Portman. And in California, State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore has conservative devotees and could draw some support against centrist former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. [World Wrestling Entertainment personality Linda McMahon is likely to challenge Bob Simmons, the anointed Republican Party Establishment candidate in Connecticut to take on Chris Dodd.]

DeVore this week decried a memo from the NRSC that included praise of Fiorina, taking direct aim at Chairman John Cornyn (Texas).

“Under John Cornyn, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has racked up an impressive string of endorsements in support of non-conservative, unpopular, poorly vetted candidates across the nation,” DeVore said. “These candidacies have thus far gone on to flounder or implode.”

It's even worse in House races around the country, where lunatic fringe teabaggers are threatening relatively mainstream conservatives, not just party choices but incumbents as well. The problems inside the South Carolina Republican Party are more than just about Joe Wilson's now infamous cri de coeur or the recent unmasking of the fact that most of the hierarchy are closet queens. The state Party is at war with itself-- a war pitting hard core conservatives against actual fascists. But former NRCC head Tom Davis, a mainstream conservative, thinks the party will indeed veer back towards a more mainstream direction. He defends the national committees' involvement in candidate selection and says it's the only way to keep the lunatic fringe from taking over the party and doomed it to electoral irrelevancy. In a slam against extremists like Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter, Davis pointed out that "The people who run the blogs, do the talk radio, they just have a different bent on the whole thing. They just have a different outlook on the world. The difficulty comes when the party shrinks, which we've done. We've been in a contractual mode in the last eight years. You shrink to the base, and the base tends to be a little harder core and less willing to give up power. Our strength is now among the independents and generating a base turnout. It's got to be resolved. A right-centered party can't be a majority nationally."

"It is right for these committees to get involved and pick the strongest candidates. When I was campaign chairman, we did this unapologetically to make sure that we got the right candidates in, and we ended up picking up seats," said Davis, who headed the NRCC during the 2002 cycle.

"If you leave it just to local committees sometimes, you have a very narrow constituency to which these candidates are appealing," he added... "I'm not sure [voters] want to put Republicans in charge of anything again," he said. "Democrats have the governing momentum. They have the legislative power. But the political equation has now shifted, as it often does, to the out party."

Is there more to the Republican Party than just this?