Republican Establishment Figures Seek To Shoot Down Tea Party Extremists Running For Office

GOP money men don't want a replay of this

Remember when the far right fringe-- the heart of the Republican Party-- went after then NRSC head John Cornyn in 2009 and again in 2010? Cornyn, scared of the extremists, let them have their way in picking extremist candidates for the GOP and today... well, there is no Senator Richard Mourdock from Indiana, no Senator Todd Akin from Missouri, no Senator Ken Buck from Colorado, no Senator Christine O'Donnell (nor a Senator Mike Castle) from Delaware, no Senator Sharron Angle from Nevada. Instead there are Democrats in all those seats-- and instead of Alaska Senator Joe Miller, a now very independent-minded Lisa Murkowski was reelected without GOP help.

This Twitter outburst yesterday morning from far right Hate Talk Radio sociopath Bryan Fischer, one of "the Christianity without Jesus" Satanists, was prompted by a Jeff Zeleny report in the NY Times about the traditional financiers of the GOP reasserting their prerogatives to run the Republican Party candidate selection process.

The Republican Establishment is worried that neo-fascist candidates in Georgia and Iowa, respectively John Bircher Paul Broun and deranged racist Steve King, will hand those two suddenly open seats to Democrats the way Mourdock did in Indiana last year after he beat mainstream conservative Richard Lugar in a primary and then turned off the general election voters with his extremism, ceding a safe Republican seat to a weak and Democrat throwing an unlikely Hail Mary Pass. No one thinks the GOP could lose Georgia... but Paul Broun makes Richard Mourdock look almost like the picture of political sobriety. Enter: the misleadingly named Conservative Victory Project, who hope to take on financially successful neo-Nazi organizations within the GOP like the Club For Growth and Jim DeMint's Heritage PAC.

The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.

...“There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” said Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads, the “super PAC” creating the new project. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.” The effort would put a new twist on the Republican-vs.-Republican warfare that has consumed the party’s primary races in recent years. In effect, the establishment is taking steps to fight back against Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations that have wielded significant influence in backing candidates who ultimately lost seats to Democrats in the general election.

The first test of the group’s effort to influence primary races could come here in Iowa, where some Republicans are already worrying about who will run for the seat being vacated by Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat. It is the first open Senate seat in Iowa since 1974, and Republicans are fearful of squandering a rare opportunity.

The Conservative Victory Project, which is backed by Karl Rove and his allies who built American Crossroads into the largest Republican super PAC of the 2012 election cycle, will start by intensely vetting prospective contenders for Congressional races to try to weed out candidates who are seen as too flawed to win general elections.

...King, a six-term Iowa Republican, could be among the earliest targets of the Conservative Victory Project. He said he had not decided whether he would run for the Senate, but the leaders of the project in Washington are not waiting to try to steer him away from the race.

The group’s plans, which were outlined for the first time last week in an interview with Mr. Law, call for hard-edge campaign tactics, including television advertising, against candidates whom party leaders see as unelectable and a drag on the efforts to win the Senate. Mr. Law cited Iowa as an example and said Republicans could no longer be squeamish about intervening in primary fights.

“We’re concerned about Steve King’s Todd Akin problem,” Mr. Law said. “This is an example of candidate discipline and how it would play in a general election. All of the things he’s said are going to be hung around his neck.”

Mr. King has compiled a record of incendiary statements during his time in Congress, including comparing illegal immigrants to dogs and likening Capitol Hill maintenance workers to “Stasi troops” after they were ordered to install environmentally friendly light bulbs. But he rejected the suggestion that his voting record or previous remarks would keep him from winning if he decided to run for the Senate.

“This is a decision for Iowans to make and should not be guided by some political staffers in Washington,” Mr. King said in an interview, pointing out that he won his Congressional race last year even though President Obama easily defeated Mitt Romney in Iowa. “The last election, they said I couldn’t win that, either, and the entire machine was against me.”

New GOP polling shows that, although King would have virtually no chance to win statewide against a popular (and likely) mainstream Democrat like Bruce Braley, his is wiping the floor with mainstream conservative Rep. Tom Latham among GOP primary voters. The GOP Establishment has been encouraging another rightwing extremist, Bob Vander Plaats, to split the lunatic fringe vote and allow Latham to slip in. But the poll shows that even with Vander Plaats in King still manages to win 31%-26%-16% and in a head-to-head against Latham, he wins 46-29%, even beating Latham in his own congressional district.

Matt Hoskins, a deranged lunatic selected by Jim DeMint to run the Senate Conservatives Fund, is best known for having backed Akin and reelected the Senate's weakest Democrat, Claire McCaskill. More recently he's been busy trying to sabotage the campaign of mainstream conservative Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia, who claims she's "too liberal... There's no question that Congresswoman Capito is well-known in the state and is favored by the Washington establishment. They know she won't rock the boat when it comes to cutting deals with Democrats to spend money we don't have. If the grassroots in West Virginia recruit a strong, viable challenger, SCF will seriously consider supporting them." Hoskins is already out on the right-wing circuit branding Rove's new operation "the “Conservative Defeat Project.”

“The Conservative Defeat Project is yet another example of the Republican establishment’s hostility toward its conservative base. Rather than listening to the grassroots and working to advance their principles, the establishment has chosen to declare war on the party’s most loyal supporters. If they keep this up, the party will remain in the wilderness for decades to come.”

Go, Joe!

Hoskins and Club for Growth have also been busy looking for a lunatic fringe candidate to run in Louisiana and they already found their preferred maniac in Alaska: Joe Miller again. I'm sure Begich is praying the prevail, since new polling shows him beating Miller, widely viewed as too extreme-- in the state that elected Sarah Palin-- 52-29%. Well, whatever happens between the squabbling conservatives, one thing we know for sure, Karl Rove, Hoskins, Norquist, Ralph Reed, Chris Chocola and the rest of the crooked operators will just continue lining their own pockets with a hefty portion of every contribution made. [I might mention at this point, that Blue America doesn't take a nickel out of the contrabutions-- not ever.]

And Georgia could become an even bigger mess for Republicans. The state is pretty solidly Republican-- though not as much as it used to be. Bush won the state with 55% in 2000 and 58% in 2004. But McCain only won 52% in 2008 and this year, Romney only managed 53%. Red? Yes, Solid, blood red? Maybe not. If the Democrats nominate a mainstream candidate like former Governor Roy Barnes and the Republicans let their freak flag fly with someone like Broun, Westmoreland, Price or Gingrey... well, it's possibly that having chased Saxby Chambliss out of a safe seat will result in the Republicans giving up another one. You think anyone even vaguely normal is going to vote for this?