Josh Romney To Primary Mike Lee?

Josh

Utah may be the most right-wing state in the country. The nuts in Texas may be more vicious and dangerous but Utah only gave President Obama 25% of its vote last year-- compared to 41% in Texas, 44% in Mississippi, 46% in Georgia and even 33% in the 4th Reich Idaho. The least red district in the state, UT-04 (home of hopelessly conservative Blue Dog Jim Matheson) has a PVI of R+16. Matheson was one of only two Democrats-- the other being the equally execrable Mike McIntyre (NC)-- to have joined the Republicans in shutting down the government. But the federal government is the state's biggest employer and the shutdown went over very badly. It isn't Matheson, Jason Chaffetz, Chris Stewart and Rob Bishop, Utah's 4 right-wing Representatives who are feeling that unpopularity, nor is it pro-shut down Senator Orrin Hatch. The voters' animus is focused squarely on junior Senator Mike Lee-- or, as some people call him, Ted Cruz's lap dog.

So while the national news has been on how the shutdown and default threat turned voters against the GOP across the country, Utah has it's own special Mike Lee-oriented story. Again, the national story is that the mainstream Republicans put a few dozen of their colleagues in swing-type districts in severe jeopardy by insisting that 50 mostly-Confederate extremists be given the reins of the House caucus and be allowed too dictate a verity radical and unpopular strategy agenda. Polling shows the result could be catastrophic for the GOP. Here's how Sean Sullivan broke it down for the Washington Post yesterday:

• Democrats hold a comfortable 48 percent to 40 percent lead among registered voters in the generic ballot test. But it’s not just the topline national numbers (which are not perfect predictors) that should worry Republicans. It’s what’s going on in Republican-held districts that should turn more heads. Republicans hold an 8-point lead in districts they control, compared to Democrats’ 30-point lead in their districts. An 8-point lead might not seem all that bad. But consider that we’re talking about all GOP districts here, the vast majority of which are very conservative and not at any risk of switching control.  What that means is that in the swing GOP seats that will decide who wins the majority, the Republican advantage is probably smaller, if it even exists. Meanwhile, Democrats, who have to play heavy defense in addition to going on offense, appear to be in the better position to buttress their incumbents.

• An emerging anti-incumbent bent that is hitting Republicans harder. Voters are displaying widespread frustration with their members of Congress in the wake of the shutdown showdown, with half disapproving of their representative in the House. But that frustration is more concentrated in Republican-held districts than it is in Democratic ones. A majority of registered voters in GOP districts (54 percent) disapprove of the job their member is doing compared to just 37 percent who approve. In Democratic districts, voters are split. Democrats need to pick up 17 seats to win back the majority, a very tall task on a limited playing field. But if the negative perceptions about GOP members persist in their districts, Democrats’ task will be eased.

• More than half of voters (52 percent) hold congressional Republicans responsible for the shutdown, compared to just 31 percent who hold President Obama responsible. Views about the way Republicans handled the budget standoff and negotiations grew more negative as the days went by. And the percentage of voters holding an unfavorable view of the Republican Party jumped up to 67 percent. None of these findings are helpful to any GOP incumbents.

In Utah, this is all focused on one man, Mike Lee, who is very lucky he won't have too face the voters again until 2016. The Wall Street Journal reports from Salt Lake City that Lee didn't get the same kind of hero's welcome back home that Ted Cruz got in Texas.

Critics in the Republican Party, including former governors and sitting legislative leaders, openly blame Mr. Lee for helping chart a course they say weakened the party’s standing nationally and dented a state economy reliant on tourists drawn to its national parks.

“Among the tea party, Mike Lee is a rock star,” said Holly Richardson, a former Republican state lawmaker and political commentator. “Among everyone else, not so much. There’s real unhappiness about what he has done to Utah and to the image of the Republican Party.”

The debate over Mr. Lee’s role in the shutdown is part of a broader struggle over the future of not just the Utah GOP but the national party, one that both tea-party activists and the Republican establishment expect to play out for months.

Even before the shutdown brought Mr. Lee to national prominence, some Utah party and business leaders had begun a $1 million petition drive to overturn the state’s caucus system that brought him to power. That system, which gives grass roots delegates a large say in picking party nominees, toppled incumbent GOP Sen. Robert Bennett-- a more conventional conservative-- in 2010 amid a wave of anger over passage of the health-care law. Mr. Lee went on to win the seat that November.

Fallout from the government shutdown, which ended last week, has opened a rift between the GOP’s activist flank and its more business-minded, establishment wing. National business groups say they are reconsidering which Republican candidates they should support.

That divide is particularly stark in heavily Republican Utah, which gave Mitt Romney his largest margin of victory in last year’s presidential election. Former Gov. Jon Huntsman describes the sentiment among Utah Republicans toward Mr. Lee, his former general counsel, as one of “widespread discontentment over how Mike Lee has handled his priorities in the Senate.”

“There is now massive, unparalleled frustration among mainstream Republicans toward the actions of a few in our party,” said Republican Kirk Jowers, who directs the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Discussions with more than a dozen party leaders and lawmakers found widespread support for Mr. Lee’s quest to unravel the health law championed by President Barack Obama, which helped to provoke the shutdown. But many fault Mr. Lee for a championing what they saw as a combative, unrealistic strategy that fueled dissension within the GOP, battered its public image and harmed the state.

“Our last chance to overturn Obamacare is to retake the Senate next year, and what Mike did in helping shut down the government made that a lot harder,” said Dan Liljenquist, a former GOP state senator who lost a GOP challenge last year to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah).

Since returning to Utah on Friday, Mr. Lee has made no public appearances and has none planned for the rest of the week. In an interview, he said he is catching up on calls while spending time with his family at home in Alpine, 45 minutes south of Salt Lake City.

“Utahns don’t like fighting in Washington, and they certainly didn’t like the fighting that led to the government shutdown,” Mr. Lee said, explaining the negative reaction locally to his role in the shutdown. But he thinks he will be vindicated: “I believe that over the next year, Obamacare will become even more unpopular, so that people we see what this was all about.”

Others agree. “You are going to have people angry at you whenever you take on a really tough issue,” said Utah GOP chairman James Evans. “But over time, people will come around to Mike’s views as he continues to articulate them.”

Still, even some of Mr. Lee’s backers note the contrast in the post-shutdown reception given to Mr. Cruz, who according to news accounts received an eight-minute ovation from hundreds ofpeople at a Texas GOP women’s group meeting Saturday, and Mr. Lee.

“Republicans here are polarized, no question about it,” said Spencer Stokes, who served for two years as Mr. Lee’s Senate chief of staff. “So, Ted Cruz went home to a standing ovation, and Mike Lee has hardly wanted to go shopping for fear of being confronted.”

Republican circles are now rife with talk of who might challenge Mr. Lee in 2016. So far, no one is firmly raising a hand. But the Count My Vote initiative to do away with the state’s caucus system, backed by many of the state’s largest GOP donors and business names, represents perhaps the best-organized effort in the country to counteract the tea-party wave in the 2010 elections.

Mr. Lee could face a tougher route to re-election in 2016 if GOP caucuses are replaced with a direct primary. That would allow a more centrist candidate to make an appeal to all Republican voters, not just the activists who dominate caucuses, political observers say.

Signs of Utah’s unhappiness over the shutdown are in plain view. A huge billboard along the route in from the airport thanks Republican Gov. Gary Herbert for reopening the state’s eight national parks during the shutdown with a $1.7 million check to the federal government.

Utah’s top radio talk show host, Republican Doug Wright, has persistently blasted Mr. Lee’s tactics on air. A running poll on the conservative station’s website has 81% of listeners describing Sen. Lee’s role in the budget battle as “a fool’s errand.”

A Brigham Young University poll taken in the midst of the shutdown battle showed the freshman senator’s approval rating falling to 40%, the lowest rating for a sitting Utah senator in years. Among Republicans, Mr. Lee’s favorable ratings were little different from those of Rep. Jim Matheson, the state’s lone Democrat in Congress.

“Lee looks vulnerable to a challenge from within his party, but the real danger could be a challenge in a general election from the right kind of moderate Democrat,” said Quin Monson, who directs the Utah Voter Poll at Brigham Young University.

"You gotta calm down, boy"

The Washington Post also looked at how his championship of the government shutdown is coming back to bite Lee in the ass back home. Philip Rucker points out that Utah "has a long tradition of being represented by pragmatic, business-minded conservatives in the U.S. Senate. Lee broke that pattern by governing as an ideological firebrand… As a result, Lee’s approval ratings in Utah have cratered, and prominent Republicans and local business executives are openly discussing the possibility of mounting a primary challenge against him. Top Republicans are also maneuvering to redesign the party’s nomination system in a way that would likely make it more difficult for Lee to win reelection in 2016."

Spencer Zwick, a Utah native and national finance chairman for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, was more direct, calling Lee a “show horse” who “just wants to be a spectacle.”

“Business leaders that I talk to, many of whom supported him, would never support his reelection and in fact will work against him, myself included,” Zwick said.

…A Brigham Young University survey conducted during the shutdown found that 57 percent of Utahans wanted Lee to be more willing to compromise. The senator’s approval rating dropped to 40 percent-- down from 50 percent in June-- with 51 percent disapproving.

Yes… even Utah. Meanwhile, Josh Romney is watching closely and if Lee looks like he could lose, the Romney son is likely to jump in against him.