realtonygoodwin
11-18-2012, 07:21 PM
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/84001.html
It’s time, they say, for Washington bosses to be more assertive about recruiting and then defending promising candidates. They argue that it’s critical to start enlisting local conservative activists as allies and to ease the tea party versus Washington dynamic that’s wreaked havoc on the party.
All easier said than done, of course. Tea party types have relished showing the chosen candidates of the Washington establishment a thing or two — and it’s hard to see them laying down arms overnight. But after a sure-bet election in 2012 turned into an electoral disaster, Republicans say resolving their primary problem is, well, their primary problem.
Now, top Republicans are considering splitting the difference between the heavy hand they wielded in 2010 that prompted sharp blowback from the right and their mostly hands-off approach of 2012. Both strategies produced a handful of unelectable candidates, so senators are gravitating toward a middle ground: engage in primaries so long as they can get some cover on the local level.
“We ought to make certain that if we get engaged in primaries that we’re doing it based on the desires, the electability and the input of people back in the states that we’re talking about,” Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, the incoming National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, told POLITICO. “And not from the perception of what political operatives from Washington, D.C., think about who ought to be the candidate in state X.”
The first-term Moran, who was elected to the spot last week by his Senate colleagues, tapped incoming Texas freshman Sen. Ted Cruz as a vice chairman for grass roots and outreach. The plan, according to party leaders, is to employ Cruz’s tea party star power to help win over activist groups that may be wary of the NRSC and help unify the GOP behind a single candidate in crucial Senate races.
It's three pages long, but worth the read. They get a quote from Rand Paul at the end too.
It is critical that the liberty candidates we support in the primaries are seen as "electable" by the GOP. I would rather have 5 new Ted Cruz's and Pat Toomey's in the Senate than 5 new Lindsey Graham's or Olympia Snowe's.
It’s time, they say, for Washington bosses to be more assertive about recruiting and then defending promising candidates. They argue that it’s critical to start enlisting local conservative activists as allies and to ease the tea party versus Washington dynamic that’s wreaked havoc on the party.
All easier said than done, of course. Tea party types have relished showing the chosen candidates of the Washington establishment a thing or two — and it’s hard to see them laying down arms overnight. But after a sure-bet election in 2012 turned into an electoral disaster, Republicans say resolving their primary problem is, well, their primary problem.
Now, top Republicans are considering splitting the difference between the heavy hand they wielded in 2010 that prompted sharp blowback from the right and their mostly hands-off approach of 2012. Both strategies produced a handful of unelectable candidates, so senators are gravitating toward a middle ground: engage in primaries so long as they can get some cover on the local level.
“We ought to make certain that if we get engaged in primaries that we’re doing it based on the desires, the electability and the input of people back in the states that we’re talking about,” Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, the incoming National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, told POLITICO. “And not from the perception of what political operatives from Washington, D.C., think about who ought to be the candidate in state X.”
The first-term Moran, who was elected to the spot last week by his Senate colleagues, tapped incoming Texas freshman Sen. Ted Cruz as a vice chairman for grass roots and outreach. The plan, according to party leaders, is to employ Cruz’s tea party star power to help win over activist groups that may be wary of the NRSC and help unify the GOP behind a single candidate in crucial Senate races.
It's three pages long, but worth the read. They get a quote from Rand Paul at the end too.
It is critical that the liberty candidates we support in the primaries are seen as "electable" by the GOP. I would rather have 5 new Ted Cruz's and Pat Toomey's in the Senate than 5 new Lindsey Graham's or Olympia Snowe's.