TEA Party losses

[charby]

Looks like the TEA Party got their ass handed to them last night. So who was saying we need more conservative candidates??

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-receive-boost-in-senate-primaries/2014/05/20/0f745eb0-e02a-11e3-9743-bb9b59cde7b9_story.html

Even Mitch McConnnell took the opposition to the wood shed:

In Kentucky, McConnell’s weak poll numbers and voters’ overwhelming dissatisfaction with the Senate he helps lead made him particularly vulnerable to a conservative primary challenger. But after spending years deftly navigating his party and more than $10 million on his primary campaign, McConnell handily defeated Matt Bevin, 60 percent to 36 percent.

Any prediction of the rest of the primaries to occur in the next few weeks??   

[birdman]

That's probably a much smaller margin of victory he's had than in prior primaries, if he's had opposition at all.  One can hope that smart candidates will recognize that and take it to heart in their behavior.

[brimic]

Rinos will continue to win- until the teat runs dry.

There are too many social conservatives that luvs their farm welfare and socialist security for a true conservative to win in certain parts of the country.

[HankB]

I think the TEA party has influenced some entrenched GOP patricians to move to the right a bit on the issues.

Whether or not they can be trusted^* not to move back towards the left once they're elected remains to be seen.



^* - trust a politician?   

[charby]

Rinos will continue to win- until the teat runs dry.

There are too many social conservatives that luvs their farm welfare and socialist security for a true conservative to win in certain parts of the country.

Maybe they need to do it with baby steps to conservatisms in stead of full battle rattle like the open carry crowd does with long arms?

The socialist didn't infiltrate with one or two elections, took them several elections and at lot of baby steps to socialism.

[roo_ster]

McConnell was a long shot, given his deep pockets and the amount party establishment was willing to spend on him.  $10million to win a primary.  In Kentucky.  He bought it fair & square.

And about half of the gaffers last go 'round were GOP establishment picks.  It is selective memory to only recall the TP candidates who mis-step.

Here's the thing: the GOP is not in the foreseeable future going to get the gimme-dat crowd vote.  Alienating their more conservative base of actual working folks just convinces them not to come to the polls.

Also, you will get more establishment candidates in states like Kentucky that have open primary voting. 

[AJ Dual]

McConnell was a poor target for the Tea Party from the get-go. It's a damn fine line, and a blurry one to boot, but a lot of the things that McConnell has done to anger the far-right were more along the lines of realpolitik in Reid's Democrat dominated Senate, rather than outright RINO'isms.

When Ann Coulter stands up for a guy in writing, it's time to move on and spend your efforts elsewhere.

As Charby notes, it's mainly persistence that got the hard Left where they are today. And that's always been a handicap of the Right. We/they have too much of a "I wanna go back to my life now"-reflex when it comes to politics, because our worldview values minarchy and things that run themselves or that don't need "running" at all.

[MillCreek]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2014/05/21/mcconnell-primary-tea-party-lessons-learned/9357247/

USA Today weighs in.

[charby]

McConnell was a poor target for the Tea Party from the get-go. It's a damn fine line, and a blurry one to boot, but a lot of the things that McConnell has done to anger the far-right were more along the lines of realpolitik in Reid's Democrat dominated Senate, rather than outright RINO'isms.

When Ann Coulter stands up for a guy in writing, it's time to move on and spend your efforts elsewhere.

As Charby notes, it's mainly persistence that got the hard Left where they are today. And that's always been a handicap of the Right. We/they have too much of a "I wanna go back to my life now"-reflex when it comes to politics, because our worldview values minarchy and things that run themselves or that don't need "running" at all.

Also in Georgia TEA party lost

And in Georgia, Democrats were banking on Republicans nominating a candidate so far to the right that he or she would alienate suburban centrist voters. But the two contenders considered to have the broadest general-election viability — businessman David Perdue and Rep. Jack Kingston — advanced to a July 22 runoff, complicating Democrat Michelle Nunn’s path to victory.

[Balog]

Valuing centrists moderates Democrat-Lite GOP candidates for their "electability" is what got us Dole, McCain, and Romney.

However, as Roo points out, the system is rigged. Incumbents very rarely lose, and elections can generally be bought.

[SADShooter]

I think I heard some talking head, or a post here, refer to this election as "The Establishment Strikes Back".

This reaffirms my view that our politics is no longer a left/right continuum or even a left/right-statist/libertarian quadrant. It's a sphere containing the insiders, with the rest of us an amorphous mass on the outside. The Tea Party and 2010 mid-terms put some pressure on the surface of the sphere, and now it's pushing back to restore itself.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

When Ann Coulter stands up for a guy in writing, it's time to move on and spend your efforts elsewhere.

This.  We've been terrible about choosing which fights to pick.  The local example in North Carolina is Thom Tillis in who beat Greg Brannon a few weeks ago.  

NC has been enjoying a conservative revolution these past few years, and Tillis is right at the heart of it.  He's the majority leader in the General Assembly, and he and the governor have spent the last few years pushing through some pretty serious conservative reforms in the state budget, welfare, taxation, self-defense and firearms laws, voter ID, education spending, and so on.  

Brannon is a successful businessman with no political experience or track record.  I'm sure he's a good guy, but there's nothing in his resume that suggests he'd make a good senator.

It would have been an easy no-brainer choice for Tillis, except that certain Tea Party leaders, mostly out-of-state bigmouths like Glenn Beck, tried to make this a big must-win Tea Party vs GOP race.  Brannon was cast as the true conservative Tea Party candidate and Tillis as a closet-progressive establishment insider.  It was obviously a bogus narrative and it went over like a lead balloon here locally, but what really gets me is that it was all just a colossal waste.  If it had worked, what did we stand to gain?  What's the point of replacing a solidly conservative, experienced, effective politician with a probably conservative, definitely inexperienced, probably ineffective businessman?  Better to spend the time and money somewhere else.

It also goes to show how the facts on the ground often look substantially different than the picture the national media and pundits try to paint.  I don't have any first-hand knowledge of the "Tea Party losses" in Georgia or Kentucky, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were similarities to NC, issues that aren't apparent from the views presented nationally.  

As always, don't trust what you hear from the media, particularly when they're pushing opinions about Republicans and/or the Tea Party.

[brimic]

Anecdote time-
The two WI senate seats have been held by democrats for decades- Russ Feingold, Heb Kohl.
Russ has had a few serious challenges (he should have been easy to beat at any election) but the (r) party always seemed to pick a squishy conservative to run, which was soundly beated in the general election.
The (R) party finally wisened up and put a conservative (TEA) into an election beat Feingold soundly.
The next senatorial election, Kohl retired, and instead of choosing one the TEA candidate or one of the more conservative candidtates, they picked former governor Tommy Thomson. Thompson was a governor during some boon years in WI and could afford to be a tax and spend republican. People must have been nostalgic when they voted for him in the primary.
Thompson got trounced in the general election by a far-lefty moonbat- Tammy Baldwin.

[roo_ster]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/05/20/todd_akin_was_not_a_tea_partyer_and_the_tea_party_is_not_costing_republicans.html

Todd Akin a Tea Partyer? Not So Much.

I'd say you can only blame "the Tea Party" for a net loss of two Senate seats since 2010. That's a period during which it helped send Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul to the upper House—during which "establishment" candidates like Denny Rehberg, Heather Wilson, Rick Berg, Josh Mandel, George Allen, Tommy Thompson, Carly Fiorina, and Dino Rossi totally failed to win seats.

Read all of it for more depth.

[birdman]

McConnell was a long shot, given his deep pockets and the amount party establishment was willing to spend on him.  $10million to win a primary.  In Kentucky.  He bought it fair & square.

When people say things like this, and unfortunately, when it rings true, it pretty much bodes poorly for the future, as it is saying:
The average voter is so damn stupid that whoever spends the most on advertising, wins.

If that is the case, they didn't buy it, idiots sold it.

[Balog]

When people say things like this, and unfortunately, when it rings true, it pretty much bodes poorly for the future, as it is saying:
The average voter is so damn stupid that whoever spends the most on advertising, wins.

If that is the case, they didn't buy it, idiots sold it.

Human nature, always has been always will be.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

When people say things like "he bought the election" or "he stole the election", more often than not, they're just making excuses for why their guy couldn't win.

Money matters in politics, but votes matter more.  A successful candidate can attract both.


Edit:  Just to be clear, I'm not trying to accuse anyone here on APS, or making any specific claims about the McConnell race.  Just making a general observation about human nature and the cogdis that often occurs when the "better" candidate loses.

[Regolith]

When people say things like "he bought the election" or "he stole the election", more often than not, they're just making excuses for why their guy couldn't win.

Money matters in politics, but votes matter more.  A successful candidate can attract both.

Yup. There are several billionaires who have attempted to run for office using their own money that found that out the hard way.

[RocketMan]

The Tea Party died quite a while ago.  They just don't know it yet.

[Nick1911]

The Tea Party Conservatism died quite a while ago.  They just don't know it yet.

FTFY.

Seriously, I agree with Charby.

Looks like the TEA Party got their ass handed to them last night. So who was saying we need more conservative candidates??

The sad reality is, the reason we only get centrist RINOs is because they are more electable then actual conservatives.  Americans [as a group] do not want conservative politicians.

[Balog]

FTFY.

Seriously, I agree with Charby.
The sad reality is, the reason we only get centrist RINOs is because they are more electable then actual conservatives.  Americans [as a group] do not want conservative politicians.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't think it's supported by the evidence. There haven't been many conservative politicians for them to support, aside from some hopelessly inept outsiders who torpedoed themselves. The more conservative folks actually do rather well when they aren't morans.

[RocketMan]

FTFY.

Seriously, I agree with Charby.
The sad reality is, the reason we only get centrist RINOs is because they are more electable then actual conservatives.  Americans [as a group] do not want conservative politicians. want socialism of one flavor or another.  They just don't know it.

FTFY

[Perd Hapley]

FTFY.

Seriously, I agree with Charby.
The sad reality is, the reason we only get centrist RINOs is because they are more electable then actual conservatives.  Americans [as a group] do not want conservative politicians.

I think this may be true.

If Tea Party candidates can't make it in the GOP, then it may be time for the GOP to change or die.

If Tea Party candidates can't make it in the US, then it may be time for the US to change or die.

A nation that prefers self-destruction to electing icky so-cons is not worth preserving by electing not-so-icky Charby-approved "moderates."

[charby]

A nation that prefers self-destruction to electing icky so-cons is not worth preserving by electing not-so-icky Charby-approved "moderates."

Dude I can't stand Theocrats, Religious Zealots and the Morality Police.

Unfortunately many TEA party moonbat/so-con candidates can be lumped into one or all of those.

[Perd Hapley]

Dude I can't stand Theocrats, Religious Zealots and the Morality Police.

Unfortunately many TEA party moonbat/so-con candidates can be lumped into one or all of those.

B.S. Left-wing fear-mongering has you so pwnd. President Santorum will not bust down anyone's door to catch them in the act of sodomy, much less use the IRS to persecute GLADD or GLAAD, or whatever it is. No Tea Party Theocrat Congress is going to force school children to pray to Jesus for the strength to kill Wiccans. The alternative to abortion on demand is not a return to fainting couches and corsets.

What is really happening here is that Tea Party-ites and so-cons tend to be far too reasonable for those who insist on radical and absurdist social policy (same-sex marriage, baby-killing, etc). "Keep the government out of our bedrooms" was not enough, so we are now in the throes of "endorse our homosexual relationships by law."

Setting aside the million-or-so innocent human beings murdered by abortion each year, the big-picture problem with the twin triumphs of the social leftists is the victory of feels over reals. Good luck having any kind of sane fiscal policy, or a healthy free market, or fourth amendment rights, from a populace that can be fooled into thinking marriage can exist without the complementarity of the sexes. Or even that the government must pretend that it can. Or that humans in the womb are just potential lives. These are gross fallacies, and we've begun to believe them. You build on a foundation of sand, if you hope to have any good government and freedom from such benighted voters. If we are ever to have clear-eyed fiscal policy, realistic assessment of our government's over-regulation, sane foreign policy, it will never come from such people.