Weeks before the November elections, leaders of the Republican Party’s increasingly dominant right wing are spending nearly as much time fretting over the potential squeamishness of their own party about implementing a radical agenda as they are ensuring they get the opportunity to enact one.
In a CNN interview yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint, the one-time kooky loner who’s now a Very Big Dog in the GOP, said the GOP would be “dead” if it didn’t keep its promises to repeal health care reform, balance the federal budget and radically reduce spending. Remember he’s the guy who thinks Social Security and Medicare have ensnared Americans in socialism, and likes to call public schools “government schools.”
Another fringe figure who’s suddenly become very relevant, congressman Steve King of Iowa, is frantic in his fears that a Republican House would fail to shut down the government as part of a strategy to repeal health reform. Indeed, he’s asking would-be Speaker John Boehner to sign a “blood oath” to include a health reform repeal in every single appropriations bill, which would have the effect of shutting down the government, just as Republicans tried to do, unsuccesfully, in 1995, in order to impose a budget on Bill Clinton.
This is a sideshow well worth watching. People like DeMint and King are trying to lash their fellow Republicans to the mast of their ship and make them immune to the siren song of the massive popularity of the public programs and commitments they aim to attack: Medicare, Social Security, federal support for educational opportunity, environmental protection, and on and on. It’s an interesting approach on the brink of what many expect to be a big Republican electoral victory, and says a lot about the gap between what Republicans are campaigning on and how they actually intend to govern when in office.

Before everyone becomes convinced that the results of the midterm elections are already carved into stone, by the zeitgeist, the “enthusiasm gap,” the economy, or the electoral map, it’s a good idea to be reminded that weird things can happen between and betwixt campaigns and election days.
Rather obviously, no one much thought Christine O’Donnell would be the Republican Senate nominee in Delaware a couple of weeks ago.
But there’s another example developing down in Georgia, where Republican gubernatorial nominee Nathan Deal’s long-simmering ethics issues about his private businesses just got considerably reinforced by his forced admission that he’s got some very large business debts that he somehow forgot to disclose on legally required state disclosures.
Deal’s trying to reassure supporters on various fronts: arguing the loans were to help out his daughter, who had stumbled into a really bad business investment; asserting he’s entirely solvent; trying a sort of Bill Clintonish “I feel your pain” message aimed at voters with financial problems; and, of course, blaming the whole incident on the godless liberal news media and his political opponents.
But a quick poll of the governor’s race taken last night by Insider Advantage indicates Deal has lost the lead he appeared to have opened up on Democratic Roy Barnes in the weeks after his nomination.
Deal may well recover and win handily. But like developments in Delaware, his latest problems are a handy reminder that for all the importance of fundamentals, money and message, the best laid plans of candidates can be blown up by the unforeseeable event.

A lot of the discussion about the midterm elections, both here and in many quarters, has revolved around the question of whether these elections will ultimately be a referendum on the status quo or a “comparative” election based on assessments of the two parties. The default drive assumption in most MSM commentary (and the approach being promoted for obvious reasons by conservative media) is that it’s a referendum, which is of course a self-fulfilling prophecy if Democrats fail to change that perception because they think it’s inevitable.
But you probably won’t see a purer presentation of the “referendum” argument than that offered by New York Times columnist David Brooks yesterday. He’s taking this on in order to push back against some asserted belief by “my liberal friends” that America’s on the brink of repudiating the GOP because its Tea Party faction is so crazy.

The fact is, as the Tea Party has surged, so has the G.O.P. When this primary season began in early February, voters wanted Democrats to retain control of Congress by 49 percent to 37 percent, according to an Associated Press-Gfk poll. In the ensuing months, Tea Party candidates won shocking victories in states from Florida to Alaska. The most recent A.P./Gfk poll now suggests that Americans want Republicans to take over Congress by 46 percent to 43 percent.

Being David Brooks and all, the columnist is not about to suggest that Americans really are eating up the Tea Party message like ice cream. Instead, he’s driven to saying nobody out there really cares what Republicans say or do:

Right now, the Tea Party doesn’t matter. The Republicans don’t matter. The economy and the Democrats are handing the G.O.P. a great, unearned revival.

Brooks does acknowledge that at some point, the extremism of the Movement will begin to matter:

This doesn’t mean that the Tea Party influence will be positive for Republicans over the long haul. The movement carries viruses that may infect the G.O.P. in the years ahead. Its members seek traditional, conservative ends, but they use radical means. Along the way, the movement has picked up some of the worst excesses of modern American culture: a narcissistic sense of victimization, an egomaniacal belief in one’s own rightness and purity, a willingness to distort the truth so that every conflict becomes a contest of pure good versus pure evil.

Yeah. But is the apparent indifference of likely midterm voters to the Tea Party excesses and what it means for the Republican Party a matter of not caring about it, or not really knowing about it? I mean, conservative activists do not typically run around boasting that they want radical changes in the U.S. Constitution, the abolition of Social Security and Medicare, and elimination of environmental laws, and when they do go publicly wacky, like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, they do pay a price for it.
But it’s the job of Democrats–and to some extent, of journalists like Brooks–to draw attention to what today’s Republicans actually think. And suggesting that such details really doesn’t matter is not helpful.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
In most of the discussions of why Mike Castle lost the Republican Senate nomination in Delaware to the wacky conservative insurgent Christine O’Donnell, commentators emphasize that Castle crossed conservatives by voting for gun control, climate-change legislation, and TARP … as well as being pro-choice. In none of the analyses I’ve read has this last factor been emphasized, or treated as anything more significant than another indicator of his “moderation.”
Ignoring abortion as an issue is an inveterate habit of the chattering classes, particularly on the progressive side of the aisle. Few people, other than celebrating right-to-lifers, have noted how much the already slim ranks of pro-choice Republicans were thinned this primary season. Aside from Castle, Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and Lisa Murkowski, and Representative Tom Campbell, have lost in major statewide contests.
This is a persistent blind spot in political commentary. When the 2008 presidential cycle began, Rudy Guiliani was treated often as the front-runner, even though his pro-choice views meant he’d have to skip the Iowa Republican Caucuses, which are beholden to that state’s right-to-life movement. Yet Rudy’s candidacy predictably crashed and burned. When John McCain was mulling his decision about a running-mate, the betting favorites in the commentariat were pro-choice figures Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge. This simply wasn’t going to happen, because the right-to-life movement has an implicit veto over Republican convention nominees. The proved their power by threatening a convention revolt against a pro-choice running-mate, and a chastened McCain iinstead selected the right-to-lifers’ very favorite politician, an obscure governor whom progressives knew nothing about named Sarah Palin.
I see the same dynamic in political coverage this year. We have been told repeatedly that the Tea Party movement is all about economics and fiscal issues, and other than a couple of articles about how Carly Fiorina’s pro-life position is a problem for her in the general election, I’ve seen zero discussion of abortion this year in non-conservative publications, particularly as it affects the Republican primaries.
Perhaps because the national media tend to be secular, we are persistently underestimating the role that abortion plays in right-wing politics. Yet it is key to understanding some of the zealous opposition that caused GOP primary voters to overthrow Mike Castle. Unless you are an aficionado of conservative blogs, you probably didn’t notice the deep opposition that many on the right were taking to Castle’s pro-choice views. Here’s renowned right-wing activist Ken Blackwell:

In the interests of party unity, the pro-life majority in the GOP has gone along with many a “RINO,” hoping that Republicans like Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe could at least be relied upon to stand with us against abortion funding and in favor of originalist judges. But Mike Castle went far beyond even these liberal Republicans.

Even if, as Jon Chait suggests in his brilliant take on the O’Donnell win, many conservative voters now think of climate change legislation as a serious threat to American freedom, it is worth remembering that the RTL movement considers abortion analogous to the Holocaust, and pro-choice pols to be enablers of monstrous evil–at worst conscious advocates of genocide.
This fact should inform the way we think about this year’s right-wing groundswell, and the role of Sarah Palin in particular. How many pundits recognized that her famous Facebook post, which declared that health care reform would authorize “death panels,” contained a dog whistle to her fellow right-to-lifers? Her statement that Trig Palin would be a likely victim of said death panels was the clear tip-off; the subtext was that godless liberals, frustrated by her refusal to kill Trig in the womb, had figured out an alternative means of finishing him off. This is unfortunately standard reasoning for committed anti-abortion activists, who are enraged by politicians and pundits who refuse to take their cause seriously.
For all the endless and interminable talk about “constitutionalism” on the right, it’s rarely acknowledged that lurking in the background is wrath about Roe v. Wade. The same is true with the rage about health care reform; if you read a lot of right-wing blogs, as I do, you’d note that fear about Obamacare producing a massive expansion of publicly-funded abortion was a major motivator of right-wing opposition. House Minority Leader John Boehner knew his constituency when he made this statement just prior to the House vote on health reform:

A ‘yes’ vote for this government takeover of health care is a ‘yes’ vote for sending hard-earned tax dollars to pay for abortions.

More generally, the anger associated with the entire Tea Party movement is, I suspect, traceable among many activists to endless frustration of its desire to end the “genocide” of legalized abortion, to which the GOP “establishment” has given little more than lip service.
Perhaps I’m overestimating the power of the abortion issue, and Mike Castle lost strictly because of his votes for climate-change legislation and TARP, or because he embodied his state’s establishment. But I’m inclined to think that his pro-choice position contributed mightily to his downfall. The abortion issue didn’t go away for the right the day the Tea Party started.

For all you fatalists out there who essentially think there’s nothing to do politically but await the inevitable Republican landslide in November, you might want to take a look at the latest CBS-New York Times poll.
While there’s plenty of gloom-and-doom in the survey about negative perceptions of the economy, the direction of the country, and political incumbents, it’s also clear the GOP has not even come close to sealing the deal on their own “solutions:”

Voters do not perceive Republicans as having better ideas and disagree with them on the biggest economic issue of the campaign — whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy — a sign the party has no real advantage on key pieces of their agenda, which makes it more necessary to run as a generic alternative to the party in power.

Attitudes towards congressional Republicans are significantly more negative than of congressional Democrats and Republicans are not perceived as having any clear plan for dealing with the country’s problems. To the extent that the Tea Party Movement is branding the GOP as obsessively concerned with budget deficits and levels of taxation, it’s worth noting that in response to an open-ended question about the most important issue facing the country, only 3% cited deficits and 1% taxes. Said movement itself now has a 18/30 favorable/unfavorable rating among self-identified independents, still another indication that its views are not exactly sweeping the nation.
The quote above from the Times story on the poll includes the most important takeaway: Republicans can only win the midterms if it’s strictly a referendum on the status quo. To the extent that voters start comparing the two parties, the GOP grows weaker. And that is why Democrats should brush aside fears of looking too “negative” and make the terrible “thinking” of their Republican opponents as clear as possible.
It’s also worth remembering that even if Republicans get through the midterms without being held accountable for an agenda that is alternatively empty and crack-brained, this “pass” won’t last forever, and certainly not through the presidential cycle of 2012.

A new Democracy Corps strategy and research paper, based on a poll of LV’s conducted 8/30-9/2 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, spotlights a promising opportunity for Democratic candidates. From the analysis:

This will be a tough election, but fortunately, the unfolding tax issue can work strongly to help Democrats and define the choice in the election…Democrats are strongly aligned with public thinking and priorities. Only 38 percent [of all respondents] favor extending the Bush tax cuts for those over $250,000 – the official position of Republican leaders and candidates. Clearly messaging around this choice – with Democrats voting for middle class tax cuts, while starting to address the deficit and protecting Social Security, contrasted with Republican candidates who still believe trickle-down economics and worsening the deficit – works for progressives.

The survey analysis notes that the tax cut debate “…noticeably moves the congressional vote to the Democrats…” Further,

Frankly, they do not have many issues where:
…There is a 17-point margin in favor of the Democratic position, 55 to 38 percent.
…The strong messages gives a disproportionate lift to the Democratic candidates – scored 13 points better than named Democratic candidates while Republican messages performed half as well.
…There is an opportunity to show seriousness on the deficit, while undermining Republicans on the issue.
…The choice re-enforces Democrats’ core values and strongest framework for the election (for the middle class versus Wall Street).
The payoff from this debate comes in a 2-point narrowing of the Republican lead in the congressional vote after hearing the debate. And for the most powerful Democratic messages, it narrows the vote by 5 points, to 45 to 47 percent.

The poll also finds “majority support for a variety of tax cut measures to protect the middle class,” including:

* Over half – 55 percent – support increasing taxes by letting some or all of the Bush-era tax cuts expire. Specifically, 42 percent say the cuts should remain in place for the middle class, but expire for those making more than $250,000. Just 38 percent say all the tax cuts should remain in place. This is not a purely base issue – by a 17-point margin, independents favor raising taxes on the wealthy.
* This message is even more popular when it is contextualized by broader economic messages. By a 10-point margin, voters are persuaded and reassured by the idea of raising taxes on the wealthiest so that revenue can be used for deficit reduction and investment in jobs.
* Majorities clearly side with extending the cuts for the middle class, at least for some time. Voters favor extending the tax cuts for the middle class for two years, as some have proposed, while a similar majority favors extending these cuts permanently. The proposals receive intense popular support from Democrats, with all proposals advocating expiration of tax cuts getting more than six-in-ten support.

Despite the Dems’ 7 points deficit in the named congressional ballot late in the campaign, the survey strongly suggests that Dems can leverage the tax debate to shift the race in a favorable direction. As the DCORPS analysis explains:

We tested eight messages – four Democratic and four Republican. The messages performed comparably – but two of the Democratic messages had a clear impact on the vote choice – enough to move the results in November.
These messages have more pull than the best Republican ones, which perform 5 points better than the vote margin for a named Republican candidate in our congressional ballot test. By contrast, the two strongest progressive arguments perform at least 10 points better than Democrats perform on the named congressional vote.
Voters are receptive to a progressive position on the economy and are willing to support a tax increase for the wealthy. These messages also help consolidate Democrats, who are eager to mobilize on behalf of strong progressive candidates. Equally important – these messages move independents. The tax frame signals Democrats’ fiscal responsibility on the deficit and creates a clearly defined choice between Republicans (who are for the wealthy, big corporations, and Wall Street) and Democrats (who are unwilling to sacrifice the already suffering middle class for the benefit of the wealthiest.)
The progressive tax frames work best among groups that Democrats should already be targeting. The Rising American Electorate, including unmarried women, minorities, and voters under the age of 30, are particularly receptive to progressive tax messages. Two-thirds of the RAE find the “economic boost” message most appealing. About six-in-ten of the RAE felt the same about investment and deficit language. The “economic boost” message also wins majority support among ideological moderates (67 percent). Democrats can gain traction among base voters with these messages, and possibly grow support among those who have not yet determined their votes.

In terms of changing voter choices in November,

…These messages have a clear impact on vote choice. We re-asked the congressional ballot and found that those who only heard the top two Democratic messages moved toward Democrats, reducing the initial 7-point deficit to just a 2-point gap, at 45 to 47 percent. Meanwhile, those who heard the less strong Democratic arguments did not shift their vote choice, as Republicans maintained a 6-point lead.

Concerning the the debate over extending middle class tax cuts while allowing a tax hike for the wealthy, the anlaysis concludes, “…It reflects good policy during these tumultuous economic times, and could prove to be good politics for those facing an uphill battle this November.”
UPDATE: Greg Sargent’s The Plum Line post in the Washington Post features highlights from his interview with Stan Greenberg regarding the DCORPS survey analysis on leveraging the tax cuts issue. Greenberg strongly urges Democrats to bring the issue to a floor vote:

“A vote will make this issue real, and bring out the clarity of the Democrats’ position,” Greenberg told me. “This is an election that’s being profoundly shaped by who’s engaged. Republicans are engaged. They are turning out in large numbers.”
“You have got to give Democrats reasons to vote,” Greenberg continued. “Things have to be at stake for Democrats to vote. This is an opportunity to make politics relevant to these voters.”
Some Dem leaders have suggested that if Republicans block such a vote in the Senate a clear enough contrast between the parties will have been drawn, making a House vote unnecessary. But Greenberg dismissed this argument, saying that Dems should hold the vote to prevent the issue from fading from the headlines.
“If this gets blocked in the Senate without a visible filibuster, and if the House does not vote, this issue goes away,” Greenberg said. “This issue is only real if you hold a vote.”
Greenberg added that a vote would convince the base that “finally, Democrats are really fighting.” He added: “Taking this to a vote sends a very clear signal that we’re serious about this issue, and that we’re taking it to the Repubicans.”
Listening, Dems?

In case you missed it, Calfornia Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman has officially become the heaviest-spending non-presidential political candidate in U.S. history. Calbuzz has the numbers:

To the surprise of no one, eMeg has already shattered New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s self-funding record for a U.S. political campaign – with seven weeks left to go before the November 2 election.
With her most recent $15 million check to herself, eMeg has now personally forked out $119,075,806.11, according to the ever-punctilious Jack Chang. Rounding off and discounting the couch change, this means that she has spent an average of $203,767.12 on each and every one of the 584 days since she declared her candidacy.
For those keeping score at home that works out to a 24/7 average of $8490.29 per hour, $141.50 per minute, and $2.36 per second.
Talk about in for a dime, in for a dollar.

Whitman originally said she was willing to spend up to $150 million of her own money to win this race. Looks like she’s on track to hit that mark or exceed it by November 2, particularly if her contest with Jerry Brown stays as tight as everyone expects it to be.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The other shoe has now dropped in the current round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. In place of the partial freeze set to expire by the end of this month, Prime Minister Netanyahu intends to adopt more limited restraints on construction in the West Bank. Ha’aretz reports that Netanyahu will be going to Sharm El Sheik tomorrow with a proposal identical to one negotiated between his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, and the Bush administration: no construction in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem; construction in isolated settlements only in built-up areas; and construction in the large settlement blocs near, as well as within, existing perimeters. (This last provision turned out to permit thousands of new housing units in Ma’aleh Adumim, Beitar Ilit, Modi’in Ilit, and Gush Etzion.)
While Netanyahu seems to be gambling that the Palestinians won’t respond to this “back to the future” proposal by pulling out of the talks, the basis for his optimism is unclear. In the wake of the Obama administration’s call early in 2009 for a complete freeze, the Israeli government eventually adopted the partial freeze now set to expire in less than three weeks. It took nearly a year of negotiations brokered by George Mitchell and Tony Blair before the Palestinians were willing to join face-to-face talks on that basis. The Palestinians have repeatedly said that they can accept nothing less, and that if the Israelis retrench further, Abbas and his team will quit the talks. At this point, there’s no reason not to take them at their word. After all, they were more reluctant than were the Israelis to return to direct talks in the first place.
So what’s the way forward? In recent months, Israeli officials have indicated privately their hope that if the Palestinians receive concessions in other areas–such as checkpoints and other restrictive security measures–that improve daily life on the West Bank, the freeze issue can be sidestepped. No doubt they will explore the viability of such an approach behind the scenes.
The other possibility is a somewhat grander bargain. At the cabinet meeting preceding the latest announcement, Netanyahu reportedly remarked, “We are saying that the solution is two states for two peoples. To my regret, I am still not hearing the phrase ‘two states for two peoples’ from the Palestinians. I am hearing them say ‘two states,’ but I am not hearing them recognize two states for two peoples.” This raises an intriguing possibility. Suppose the Prime Minister were to challenge President Abbas: “You want a wider freeze? Well, there’s something I’d like from you–namely, a recognition of the ‘two states for two peoples’ principle as the basis for further negotiations. Your need and my need rise or fall together.”
The objections to this strategy are obvious. First, the Palestinians might well reject it. True, but so what? If they did, Israel at least would be on the record as having shown flexibility on a matter of core concern. Second, whatever its fate, any offer along those lines might well spark an Israeli cabinet crisis. It probably would. But at some point Netanyahu will have to acknowledge that if he truly wants peace, he’ll need a different coalition–namely, the one that should have formed two years ago. Otherwise put: The decision that the current coalition must be preserved at all costs would represent the clearest possible evidence that this round of negotiations isn’t serious.
Well, speaking as an American Jew and as a sincere friend of Israel, I hope it is serious. If the negotiations end without result, I want it to be clear to the United States (and to those portions of the world that have kept an open mind) that the failure was not Israel’s fault. “A decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind” was more than a throwaway phrase in 1776, and it still is.

Today’s news brought this tidbit from Minnesota:

Bill Clinton contends that the Republican Party has shifted so far to the right this election cycle that George W. Bush would be considered a liberal by 2010’s standard.
“A lot of their candidates today, they make him look like a liberal,” the former president said of his conservative successor during a Democratic fundraiser in Minnesota, the Associated Press reported.

Now I’m sure many people reading this quote would chalk it up to partisan hyperbole. But it’s actually a pretty acute observation.
Throughout this year’s primary season, Republican incumbents who supported No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, comprehensive immigration reform, or TARP were routinely denounced as RINOs by opponents. Those happen to be four of the larger policy initiatives of the Bush administration.
Now outside of the slim ranks of the Paulists, few Republicans are critical of Bush 43’s decision to invade Iraq, and his tax cuts remain wildly popular in the GOP. But you’d have to say that the Bush initiative that’s really enjoying a renewed boom in support among Republicans this year is his failed effort to partially privatize Social Security, which is rapidly becoming an item of mandatory conservative orthodoxy.
Anti-Bush conservative revisionism has created an important strategic problem for Democrats, who have often sought to frame the midterm elections as a choice between moving ahead with the Obama administration or returning to the failed policies of the Bush era. With some justice, conservatives respond that they, too, have moved beyond Bushism, and voters report that they don’t perceive the GOP as simply offering a return to pre-Obama policies.
The reality is that well before 2008, conservatives decided to separate themselves from the unpopular Bush by moving to his right, even as they explained his failures as resulting from infidelity to conservative principles. Epitomized by their 2008 vice-presidential nominee, they became “mavericks” by way of ever-more-intense ideological rigidity and polarization. This development nicely coincided with the immediate need to avoid going down the tubes with W., and with the conservative movement’s ancient tendency to attribute all political failure to moderation and bipartisanship. Thus was born the Tea Party Movement in all but name.
Occasionally this determination to make ideological stridency the lodestar of GOP politics becomes too extreme for electoral respectability, as with Republican nominees like Christine O’Donnell of Delaware, Dan Maes of Colorado, and Sharron Angle of Nevada. But Democrats need to start making it clear that the only thing that separates O’Donnell from the average GOP politician is her personal financial record and a flair for wacky statements. If that means giving up on Bush-bashing, so be it; as President Clinton suggests, the target has really moved beyond the views of the 43d president.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Christine O’Donnell is not someone you’d expect to be a Republican nominee for a competitive U.S. Senate contest, particularly in the staid state of Delaware, and particularly as the choice of primary voters over Congressman Mike Castle, who up until yesterday had won twelve consecutive statewide races.
O’Donnell is a recent newcomer to Delaware and, since arriving, has managed to get into trouble with her student loans, her taxes, her mortgage, and her job. She also unsuccessfully sued a conservative organization for gender discrimination. In general, she’s the kind of person whom you’d expect Tea Party activists to excoriate for irresponsibility, not promote as a candidate for high office. But yesterday she beat Castle handily, becoming yet another exhibit of the extraordinary extent to which ideology has trumped every other factor in the 2010 Republican primary season.
Where does this leave us? Yesterday’s eight contests all but ended 2010’s primaries, and we’re now able to step back and assess their overall political impact. The immediately obvious effect of this year’s contests has been to move the GOP far, far to the right–not only via successful primary challenges that overthrew incumbents, but also because the remaining independent-minded Republicans, fearing for their careers, rushed headlong into Tea Party orthodoxy. Meanwhile, few Democratic incumbents lost, and few contested primaries followed any sort of ideological script.
The body count of establishment candidates who lost to right-wing challenges is pretty impressive, particularly in a year full of rich opportunities to win over independents and Democrats by running candidates who are attractively centrist.
The fallen include two incumbent senators: Robert Bennett of Utah (who didn’t even qualify to participate in the primary) and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Another purge victim was Florida Governor Charlie Crist, the GOP star who was driven to become an independent. There was Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who lost a gubernatorial primary; Florida gubernatorial candidate Bob McCollum; Colorado Senate candidate Jane Norton and Colorado gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis; Delaware Senate candidate Mike Castle; Nevada Senate candidate Sue Lowden; Kentucky Senate candidate Trey Grayson; and California Senate candidate Tom Campbell. House incumbents like Bob Inglis of South Carolina lost for the sin of voting with the Bush administration in favor of TARP. Of course, many of these races involved extenuating circumstances, as in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary, where the candidate positioned furthest to the right–Nikki Haley–won in no small part because of a backlash against aggressive attacks on her character and ethnicity. But the sheer number of upsets from the right is stunning, especially as compared to the number of upsets pulled off by moderate Republicans, which amounted to one: Rick Snyder’s money-driven victory over a divided conservative field in the Michigan gubernatorial primary.
The roll of candidates who surrendered to the right-wing is in some ways even more impressive. Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk won against weak conservative opposition after repudiating his vote for climate-change legislation. Arizona Senator John McCain abandoned what was left of his own moderate voting record in the process of subduing J.D. Hayworth. California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman beat conservative challenger Steve Poizner by running an unbelievable number of ads attacking him as an abortion-rights supporter and tax-and-spend champ, and “just another liberal Sacramento politician,” even as she talked tough on immigration. Whitman went so far that she’s spent every moment since the primary trying to regain her centrist bona fides, and still hasn’t recovered. Indeed, it’s difficult to identify any competitive Republican primary, even in areas where moderates have traditionally done well, in which every viable candidate did not aggressively brand him- or herself a “true conservative.”
The role of the Tea Party movement in this rightward shift was significant, but it was not ubiquitous. And if, like me, you think the Tea Partiers are simply a mobilized bloc of conservative Republican voters, focusing on their role as if it were some sort of independent force is a chimera. What we have actually witnessed this year is the final victory in a Fifty Year War waged by the conservative movement for control of the Republican Party. The timing of this rightward lurch is remarkable, given that the usual practice of parties which have recently lost multiple elections is to “move to the center.” And, barring some miracle, an electoral triumph for this newly hard-right Republican Party will almost certainly render the transformation semi-permanent, confirming, as it will, the longstanding belief held by “movement conservatives” that excessive moderation–usually defined as any moderation–hurts Republicans politically.
The contrast with Democratic primaries is vivid. There were only two major left-leaning primary challenges to statewide incumbents, in Arkansas and Colorado, and they both failed. Neither of these challengers was a fire-breathing progressive. Left-wing challenges to House incumbents in California, Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma also failed; only in Florida was the contest close. In most of the country, Democrats united early behind their strongest general election candidate, and even where there were competitive statewide primaries–as in the Pennsylvania and Ohio Senate races and the Alabama, Minnesota, and Vermont gubernatorial races–ideological differences were relatively subdued. The closest thing to a “purge” was probably in Alabama, where Artur Davis chose to thumb his nose at his own electoral base, and faced the consequences. If there was a “struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party,” it was more like a schoolyard tussle than a cage match.

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