US
2012: The Tea Party fixes a strong brew, but will
the voters drink it?
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article is run courtesy of Daily Maverick. To
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What with all
the attention to the presidential horse race
between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, readers
could be forgiven for forgetting that there are a
lot more contests across America. And in a number
of those, the Tea Party, once thought to be a
dwindling force within the Republican Party, has
gained some surprising leverage. J BROOKS
SPECTOR takes a look.
The
presidential race in America usually gets the
lion's share of public and media attention in
America's quadrennial elections, but
as Daily Maverick readers
almost certainly know by now, it is not the only
election in the US this year. About a third of the
Senate, all 435 members of the House of
Representatives, several dozen governorships,
thousands of state legislators, county executives
and council members, mayors, city councillors and
dozens of other offices are also up for selection
by voters. Among these, several senatorial
elections are among most important.
With
the primaries virtually completed, these races are
in much clearer focus. Among these, a distinct
pattern seems to be emerging with the selection of
candidates who give allegiance to Tea Party-style
political ideas. Tea Party-style ideals matter
because Republicans believe - and many Democrats
fear - the electoral map and the voters'
collective anti-incumbent feeling about Congress
may give Republicans a good shot at claiming a
majority in the Senate. If most of these Tea
Party-aligned candidates win their individual
elections, even if the GOP doesn't gain a narrow
51- or 52-seat majority, the Republican Party as a
whole then moves that much further to the right.
This, in turn, means a sharper tension
between the more conservative and relatively more
moderate wings of that party in the Senate.
Moreover, by that calculation the party as a whole
would be even less willing join Democrats in
endorsing any bi-partisan consensus efforts
designed to pass particularly contentious
measures. This, in turn, would be a predictor of
continuing acrimony over budget and tax measures
in the congressional session beginning January
2013.
Among 17 contested Senate races,
plus Republican stronghold Texas, the Tea Party
movement has embraced half dozen Republican
candidates. Especially interesting races include
the ones in Texas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Nebraska,
and Indiana.
In Texas, Ted Cruz ultimately
coasted to an easy 13-point victory over Lt. Gov.
David Dewhurst in a runoff election and is a
virtual lock to win the general election. Cruz is
a political newbie who was "blessed" by Sarah
Palin in his primary race. Gail Collins, the
famously acid-tongued columnist at The New York
Times, couldn't hold back about Cruz' victory when
she wrote, "Texas Republicans nominated a Senate
candidate who is worried about protecting the
world's golf courses from the United Nations.
Republicans, I think you need to get a grip."
Meanwhile, in Indiana, Richard Mourdock
had earlier upended veteran incumbent Richard
Lugar; former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson is
being pursued by two candidates; and in Nebraska,
Deb Fischer won the right to take on former
Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey. Collins, poking some
more fun at the wackier statements by these
right-leaning candidates, noted Mourdock has
managed to become "involved in a controversy over
whether or not he compared Barack Obama's auto
industry bailout to slavery. We do not really need
to resolve the issue, except to say that Mourdock
is fond of making convoluted historical analogies
and that he really, really did not like the auto
bailout, despite Indiana's rather large population
of autoworkers." Admit it, like or dislike her,
she has a real knack for taking the mickey out of
a politician.
In Missouri, three different
Republicans tried to portray themselves as the
candidate most strongly aligned with Tea Party
values before Congressman Todd Akin won the right
to challenge incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill,
whose candidacy was deemed to be nearly ready for
the ICU. Political observers now believe the
Democrats have caught a break when Akin won the
Republican nomination. Akin has a history of
over-the-top statements such as comparing federal
involvement in student loans to the "stage three
cancer of socialism" as well as his wild-eyed
assertion that liberalism is grounded in "hatred
of God."
But some Democrats argue Akin's
real vulnerability is not his eye-rolling tongue,
but his errant hand - his voting hand that is. He
joined 23 other congressmen (and against 147
Republicans) to oppose the Training and Research
for Autism Improvements Nationwide Act; was one of
13 congressmen to give a thumbs down on a motion
"expressing the support of the House of
Representatives for the goals and ideals of the
National School Lunch Program"; and joined 10
others to vote against a measure "expressing the
sense of the House of Representatives that
providing breakfast in schools through the
National School Breakfast Program has a positive
impact on classroom performance."
In
Akin's defence, his campaign managers said the man
was only expressing his political conscience.
McCaskill was bracing for a hugely tough race but
as more Missourians are barraged with Akin's
voting record, the smart money may move in her
direction. This race will be lots of fun to watch.
Meanwhile, in Nebraska, former Sen. Bob
Kerrey will now be positioned in an uphill fight
against Deb Fischer. As a result, he has been
issuing statements pinning Tea Party-dom on
Fischer as a kind of badge of dishonour. In one of
these, referencing Fischer's statements about
America's social security (government-managed old
age retirement pension system) program, Kerrey's
campaign manager said of Fischer, "She is either
sending smoke signals to her Tea Party friends or
she is grossly uninformed on what Social Security
is."
As a result of all of this sturm und
drang among the Republicans, if the Democrats
manage to hang on with a slender majority, new
senators like Cruz could be expected to draw
together with conservatives like Jim DeMint of
South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky, putting
them at serious odds with Republican Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell in intra-party debates over
strategy, tactics and objectives.
If that
happens, McConnell's travails would come to
resemble Republican Speaker of the House John
Boehner's predicament in this past term, in which
he tried to hammer out complex, fragile deals with
Democrats to address the country's fiscal snarls
while holding fractious Republicans together to
support the deals he brokered. Alternatively,
should the Republicans actually win a senate
majority, McConnell would be forced to find some
kind of balance between the DeMint-Paul wing and
the remaining moderates such as Maine Sen. Susan
Collins in order to govern that chamber.
Perhaps sensing the first shift in this
political wind for Republicans, Richard Mourdock
told the media the other day, "I notice that Mitch
McConnell is speaking at a Tea Party rally (in
Kentucky with Rand Paul) soon." Mourdock had
campaigned with Cruz, and Cruz in turn credited
Mourdock's insurgent victory with inspiring him to
run for his own nomination. Mourdock then added,
"Just the fact that the Republican leadership is
willing to reach out to those folks is important.
If that kind of coalition comes together, on Day 1
it will be if not a literal majority a real large
majority, and I think on Day 1 we will jump right
into the frying pan." Sort of a shot across the
bow of McConnell's ship.
Some Democrats
are not entirely above rubbing the hands over this
looming battle for the soul of the Republicans -
at least as it may play out in the Senate. For
example, Patty Murray, the Democratic senator from
Washington, said, "I think it's more of their
problem than ours." Murray is chair of the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Matt
Canter, a spokesman for Murray's committee added,
"The Tea Party positions and Tea Party policies
and Tea Party agenda is going to be a huge
vulnerability."
While all this has been
going on at the state level, the Romney campaign
has gotten caught in another one of those
statements that may get the right wing of his
party into a snit that he is guilty of yet another
"flip flop". Mitt Romney has gained the ire of
conservative allies when his spokeswoman offered
up praise for his accomplishments when Romney was
governor of Massachusetts.
On Wednesday,
campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul invoked
Massachusetts's expansion of health coverage on
Fox TV News as their defence against a tough new
ad funded by an Obama-supporting Super PAC, in
which a former steelworker whose plant was closed
by Bain Capital blames Romney for his family's
loss of health insurance and his wife's subsequent
death from cancer. In response, Saul said, "To
that point, if people had been in Massachusetts,
under Governor Romney's health-care plan, they
would have had health care. There are a lot of
people losing their jobs and losing their health
care in President Obama's economy." Eh? Que?
Watch for some really dog-eat-dog,
down-and-dirty, "and so's your old man" charge and
counter-charge politicking in these state-wide
races, every bit as much as the one between the
Romney and Obama camps, as the campaign moves
through the remaining two and a half months before
the November elections. DM
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article is run courtesy of Daily Maverick. To
visit their site, please click here.
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