Posted on 08/06/2014 12:00:35 AM PDT by nathanbedford
The news that just came across my screen on Fox that incumbent Senator Pat Roberts has prevailed in his primary for reelection to the Senate from Kansas (or in his case from Arlington, Virginia) is heartbreaking.
The implications are dispiriting. His victory implies that in the American heartland the Republican Party cannot reform itself when confronted with an egregious example of elitism. If the Republican Party in Kansas (Kansas!) cannot reform itself there, how can it expect to prevail in purple states? How can we expect to carry a message to Reagan Democrats and Independents if The Tea Party cannot even convince Kansas farmers that their absentee senator of 36 years no longer remotely represents their interests in Washington?
If The Tea Party in Kansas cannot penetrate the consciousness of staunch conservatives where can it prevail? If the apparatus of the Republican machine in Kansas can prevail with a flat-out Rino whose very connection to the state is so patently fraudulent over a genuine grassroots conservative, a physician, how can the GOP establishment be reformed anywhere?
Before I give in to despair I will await the postmortems which will no doubt tell me that Pat Roberts flooded the zone with money, beat us on the airwaves, that our candidate was somehow flawed, that the challengers simply did not have the infrastructure and the ground game etc.
But I fear that even in these parlous times of malaise at home and failure everywhere abroad, the ideal constituency of The Tea Party was indifferent to the current state of affairs or was somehow behind the power curve and utterly ignorant of the facts of Pat Roberts residence and voting record. Somehow, the message in this case cannot be said to have been wrong, at best we can hope that the cause was a failure of execution. I doubt such a best case but I await the details.
Finally, this defeat for reform is alas not an isolated setback. We have seen that the Republican establishment apparatus is so powerful in Mississippi that it can set aside a decisive Tea Party victory in a primary by hijacking the runoff. We have seen what has happened in South Carolina, Kentucky and what will happen in Tennessee. I hope we get enough data out of these primaries to tell us what went wrong. With luck we will find that we simply do not have the infrastructure to prevail in an election on a statewide basis because a reform movement cannot hope to prevail once every six years with a top-down effort against a well entrenched, fully financed Republican establishment. No matter what the data tells me, however, I am discouraged by the tone deafness of Republicans everywhere.
You must have been watching some other election where an Olympia Snowe type candidate was the incumbent. Pat Roberts is the one of the most reliable staunch conservatives in the U.S. Senate, and even the most die-hard Milton Wolf supporters in Kansas have begrudgingly admitted that. Every political organization that rates politicians also reflects that and shows that Roberts votes the right way over 90% of the time. He was one of only a handful of Senators who stood with Ted Cruz during the filibuster while the REST of the Senate Republicans caved.
If that's your idea of a "RINO", I'd hate to see what your definition of conservative is.
We’re not in Kansas any more.
Simple: Eating your own. Being hell bent on "taking out" incumbents who are strong supporters of Ted Cruz, while giving actual RINOs a pass (nobody bothered to lift a finger to help Joe Carr defeat Lamar Alexander until the last few weeks of the campaign, and even worse, we have this defeatist attitude that liberal Republicans in so called "blue states" are the "best we can get", so the result is the GOP establishment shoved hard-left socialist like Mark Kirk in the U.S. Senate, and our side went along with it).
You don't see the UKIP in England try to "target" the best members of the Conservative Party simply because they're incumbents, and run a clueless amateur against them because some radio talk show thought it was a good idea. Instead they go after leftists in both parties and run credible candidates. That's why the UKIP is winning and the Tea Party is losing.
Agree. RINO is a term that is being thrown around like the Race Card. If someone says they are Tea Party it is automatically assumed they are, even if there is no evidence to verify the fact. Roberts has been determined to be the 8th most conservative member of the Senate and stood with Cruz. In Kansas we have had our share of outright RINO's but Roberts isn't one.
Good insight.
Elections are not going to save us. We went Soviet. They are now as corrupted as the rest of the federal beast and most Americans are clueless that the country has been overthrown in a velvet coup with inside help from the Ruling Class.
I like the fact that Kansas has a closed primary system; that’s a very good thing and helps the base hold incumbents accountable.
I dislike the fact that the Kansas primary election rules don’t allow for a run-off in the event no contestant gets at least 50% +1. That allows situations such as we had in Kansas where the incumbent gets less than a majority of the votes (that is, the majority actually voted AGAINST the incumbent and want to see him replaced) but because of MULTIPLE challengers the majority “AGAINST” vote was split.
A runoff election provision should be added so the base’s wishes can be actually captured.
That’s the outlook of those who put party over country.
um there is no actual Tea Party. Comparing the UKIP to it is a wrong comparison. These are Republicans running against each other.
Getting rid of incumbents in ones own party is quite difficult since they have name recognition, money and endorsements which make them seem more Conservative than they are in reality.
The average person in Kansas is a goober moron Wal Mart shopping shlub. They are almost as part of the idiocracy as the polar bear hunters in the urban areas and the rest of the humanoids that are breeding and consuming and "Slouching towards Gomorrah" with great abandon.
It will take a natural or man made catastrophe and or a cult of personality strong enough to wake these fat flip flop wearers from their perpetual deep fried, trans fat, high fructose corn syrup food comas.
Stop giving in to despair. It’s silly and a waste of energy.
Your words mock reality. Durbin, yes. Kirk, no.
I think your count is somewhat off.
Is it “staunch(ly) conservative” to vote for maintaining MFN status with Red China, and to normalize trade with Vietnam? How about the statist move of countenancing “fast track” presidential trade authority? How about the extension of the “roving” warrantless wiretaps that the NSA was fond of abusing (a 2011 vote)? How about his pro-subsidy stance on agriculture? Never mind voting yes to confirm John Roberts? Furthermore, there is his liberal stances with respect to Iraq during the war, much of which have been debunked by ISIS/ISIL.
Some of the big votes that are staunchly liberal cannot have their impact measured by percentage of raw votes on the perceived conservative side.
Sounds like someone’s been in IL too long, from that spate of posts.
We need instant run off or similar mechanisms in our elections to allow minority parties and party factions to have a voice not run by big money.
Reason being: Pat Roberts was not a good target, while Milton Wolf was something less than a good champion.
In general, there's nothing wrong with the way Pat Roberts votes -- he is a reliable conservative. Incumbency and tenure alone were not a sufficient reason to dump him.
In this regard, I have some inside information: My sis, the social worker, a radical lib who resides in Kansas, hates Pat Roberts with a purple passion. For me, that serves as an endorsement.
Milton Wolf, on the other hand, marshaled few arguments for his election beyond Roberts' incumbency and tenure plus his election might somehow embarrass his distant cousin. Frankly, he struck me as a bit of a kook and something less than a serious candidate.
By the way, my sis was rooting for Wolf -- on the premise that he would be easier for the Democrat to beat in the general election.
In other words, Roberts vs Wolf is not a contest that should reflect upon the Tea Party movement in any way.
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