Establishment Republicans May Be Winning The Primaries But The Tea Party Wing Controls The Argument

Louisiana teabagger Steve Scalise isn't the biggest win for the Ted Cruz wing of the GOP

The reaction from ugly Republican racists to the embarrassing Tea Party losses in Oklahoma and Mississippi Tuesday-- two of the most brainwashed and extreme right-wing states in the U.S.-- was, to put it mildly, ungracious. McDaniel, of course, is refusing to concede. Limbaugh was screaming about Uncles Toms on the radio the next day and, as the National Memo pointed out, Palin declared that the Mississippi election had been tampered with, the results were illegitimate and that it is pointless for people like her to support the Republican Party.

"Ruh roh! In order to save an entrenched 42-year member of the good old boys club what kind of 'Scooby snacks' has 'DC' promised to Mississippi Democrats to intervene in the GOP runoff for U.S. Senate?" she asked. When the enticing treat of not having Chris McDaniel as their senator proved too much for Democrats to pass up, Palin was predictably displeased.

"If Republicans are going to act like Democrats, what’s the use in getting all gung ho about getting other Republicans in there?" she pouted to Sean Hannity on Tuesday night.
The next day, she took to her Facebook again to voice her displeasure.

"When an election is questionable, with potential legal violations, politics MUST be put aside and the irregularities MUST be fully investigated. Regardless of party, we owe it to voters and to democracy within our Republic," Palin wrote.

This morning Sheryl Gay Stolberg was reporting from Tennessee that the Ted Cruz wing of that state's GOP is undaunted and ready to triumph over Lamar Alexander and install a lunatic fringe neo-fascist, Joe Carr, as the state's next U.S. senator, despite polling that shows 64% of Tennessee Republicans happy with Alexander. Alexander has the poll numbers, Newt Gingrich and the state Republican Party but Carr has… Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Jim DeMint and a motley crew of delusional, drug-addicted Hate Talk Radio hosts.

Given that Chris McDaniel, Mr. Cochran’s Tea Party challenger, lost Tuesday, such optimism might seem out of place. But Tea Party conservatives here and in Washington say that, if anything, the close call in Mississippi-- and what appeared to be Mr. Cochran’s reliance on Democrats to win his runoff race-- has only emboldened them.

...In many ways, Mr. Alexander’s approach, Republican strategists say, is a model for how incumbents should prepare to rebuff a challenger. With his penchant for deal-making with Democrats, a voting record that infuriates Republican purists and a long history in Washington, Mr. Alexander knew he would be vulnerable.

So, unlike Mr. Cochran, Mr. Alexander started laying the groundwork for his re-election early. In January 2012, he quit his Republican leadership post, saying it would “liberate” him to work on issues he cared about. But it also freed him to spend more time at home in Tennessee. Aides hope this will help him avoid the impression, which plagued Mr. Cantor, that he is too entrenched in Washington.

Of course, the real story of the Tea Party defeats this year is that it cost the Republican Establishment an immense amount of money-- for which the Chamber of Commerce, which footed the bill, is getting precious little in return in terms of their agenda-- and, worse yet, has moved the party's center of gravity far to the right, making it harder to go into general elections outside of the Old Confederacy and appeal to normal voters. Tea Party candidates aren't winning-- although they did managed to insert Steve Scalise (R-LA) into the House leadership-- but the Tea Party agenda is now the Republican Party agenda.

The scope of the effort to suppress activist-backed candidates has been broader and costlier than is widely understood, covering at least 20 House and Senate primaries from North Carolina to California, and from coastal Mississippi to the outer tip of Long Island. The loose coalition of establishment forces encompasses two dozen advocacy groups, industry associations and super PACs that have raised and spent millions on behalf of Washington’s chosen candidates. Former Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the “quote ‘establishment’” had successfully divided up the primary map this year to avoid duplicating one another’s efforts. Eventually, Duncan said, outside groups on the right may realize that they’re better off working with the national party than raging against it. Indeed, in many cases this year, national party favorites have tacked well to the right to win their primaries.

“I think we have to keep on winning. I think we have to show up and make sure that our candidates are not going to be complacent and that they start early,” Duncan said. “That wake-up call certainly seems to have gotten through.”

Nearly a third of the establishment money has come from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The business lobby’s spending in this year’s toughest primaries has about equaled the $7 million that the conservative Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund have spent together on the most fractious elections-- excluding races, like the Senate campaigns in Arkansas and Alaska, where there’s been no meaningful clash between establishment-sanctioned outside groups and the activist right.

And the $23 million figure isn’t even close to a full accounting of what D.C.-backed candidates spent to win their nomination fights. Candidates themselves, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, have collectively spent tens of millions more from their campaign accounts.

Top Republican strategists and party officials say they have no regrets about going all-in against flawed primary candidates. In a perfect world, they say, the whole expensive ordeal would be unnecessary. With conservative outside groups routinely bumping off incumbent lawmakers and prized recruits, it’s simply the cost of doing business-- now and perhaps for the foreseeable future.

Patrick O'Connor, in this morning's Wall Street Journal was more analytic: Tea Party's Poll Setbacks Don't Limit Its Washington Clout. He asserts that the battle of the Export-Import Bank, in which Tea Party Republicans and House progressives are mounting a challenge to the corporate whores of both party Establishments, is the latest example of the Tea Party being far from dead and buried. "[T]he disconnect between tea-party election losses and the movement's continued power in Washington," he wrote, "underscores deep divisions inside the GOP that show no sign of abating after a busy spring in which so-called establishment candidates won far more intraparty contests than they lost. The GOP leadership, for example, benefited from millions of dollars in campaign spending by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to promote leadership-backed candidates in nearly a dozen primaries, part of a broad effort to stem tea party momentum. And yet three of the Chamber's top legislative priorities-- an overhaul of immigration law, a replenished Highway Trust Fund and reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank-- are in jeopardy because of conservative resistance in Congress."

My guess is that Thad Cochran has no intention-- if he even has an understanding-- of granting the NAACP the reciprocity it is asking for. That just isn't how Republican politics is working at a time when the Tea Party can cost the Establishment millions and millions of dollars just by growling some nonsense with a southern drawl.