CaseyJones
12-12-2013, 09:25 AM
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/tea-party-gop-senators-100988.html
http://images.politico.com/global/2013/12/10/cornyn_graham_roberts_cochran_mcconnell_ap.jpg
GOP senators have aggressively tried to keep their conservative base at bay to ensure there’s virtually no space on their right for a primary foe to emerge.
That didn’t work so well.
Republican primary challengers are lining up to take on sitting senators next year in eight of the 12 races involving sitting GOP senators, gunning for party leaders like Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, veterans like Thad Cochran in Mississippi and Pat Roberts in Kansas and deal-makers like Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Texas Sen. John Cornyn became the latest target this week, when a fiercely conservative congressman, Steve Stockman, suddenly announced plans to challenge the Senate’s second-ranking Republican in next March’s primary.
“I think it’s pretty thin gruel,” Cornyn said of Stockman’s case for his candidacy: that the senator didn’t fight hard enough to defund Obamacare.
The intraparty battles are the latest iteration of the tea party-versus-establishment war that has rocked the Republican Party since the 2010 elections and thwarted their efforts to retake the majority. After watching two sitting senators — Dick Lugar of Indiana and Bob Bennett of Utah — lose to insurgent candidates in the last two cycles, tea party-backed candidates are looking to repeat their luck in 2014 and fundamentally reshape the Senate. The threat of a challenge alone has implications for policymaking in Washington: It is enough to scare off attempts by many GOP senators to cut deals with Democrats and risk a revolt from the right.
While many of the GOP senators facing primary threats hold safe Republican seats, party veterans fear the endless internecine warfare will distract from the overall goal of returning to the Senate majority for the first time since 2006.
Graham, who has seen his poll numbers sag back home, called the primary battles a “fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” arguing that hard-line conservatives are targeting “anyone who has ever worked with a Democrat on anything.”
“The party is going through a struggle here,” Graham added.
http://images.politico.com/global/2013/12/10/cornyn_graham_roberts_cochran_mcconnell_ap.jpg
GOP senators have aggressively tried to keep their conservative base at bay to ensure there’s virtually no space on their right for a primary foe to emerge.
That didn’t work so well.
Republican primary challengers are lining up to take on sitting senators next year in eight of the 12 races involving sitting GOP senators, gunning for party leaders like Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, veterans like Thad Cochran in Mississippi and Pat Roberts in Kansas and deal-makers like Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Texas Sen. John Cornyn became the latest target this week, when a fiercely conservative congressman, Steve Stockman, suddenly announced plans to challenge the Senate’s second-ranking Republican in next March’s primary.
“I think it’s pretty thin gruel,” Cornyn said of Stockman’s case for his candidacy: that the senator didn’t fight hard enough to defund Obamacare.
The intraparty battles are the latest iteration of the tea party-versus-establishment war that has rocked the Republican Party since the 2010 elections and thwarted their efforts to retake the majority. After watching two sitting senators — Dick Lugar of Indiana and Bob Bennett of Utah — lose to insurgent candidates in the last two cycles, tea party-backed candidates are looking to repeat their luck in 2014 and fundamentally reshape the Senate. The threat of a challenge alone has implications for policymaking in Washington: It is enough to scare off attempts by many GOP senators to cut deals with Democrats and risk a revolt from the right.
While many of the GOP senators facing primary threats hold safe Republican seats, party veterans fear the endless internecine warfare will distract from the overall goal of returning to the Senate majority for the first time since 2006.
Graham, who has seen his poll numbers sag back home, called the primary battles a “fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” arguing that hard-line conservatives are targeting “anyone who has ever worked with a Democrat on anything.”
“The party is going through a struggle here,” Graham added.