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 Jim DeMint Ping! |
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Posted on 11/03/2010 7:06:56 PM PDT by Qbert
Long-simmering tensions within the Republican Party spilled into public view Wednesday as the pragmatic and conservative wings of the GOP blamed each other in blunt terms for the party’s failure to capture the Senate.
With tea party-backed candidates going down in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada, depriving Republicans of what would have been a 50-50 Senate, a bloc of prominent senators and operatives said party purists like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had foolishly pushed nominees too conservative to win in politically competitive states.
Movement conservatives pointed the finger right back at the establishment, accusing the National Republican Senatorial Committee of squandering millions on a California race that wasn’t close at the expense of offering additional aid in places like Colorado, Nevada and Washington state, where Democratic Sen. Patty Murray holds a narrow lead as the votes continue to be counted.
The back-and-forth following an otherwise triumphant election amounted to a significant ratcheting up of the internecine battle that has been taking place within the GOP for the past year.
“Candidates matter,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “It was a good night for Republicans but it could have been a better one. We left some on the table.”
Referring to the debate within the right about whether the party was better off losing the Delaware seat than winning with a moderate Republican like Rep. Mike Castle, who lost the GOP primary to Christine O’Donnell, Graham was even more blunt.
“If you think what happened in Delaware is ‘a win’ for the Republican Party then we don’t have a snowball’s chance to win the White House,” he said. “If you think Delaware was a wake-up call for Republicans than we have shot at doing well for a long time.”
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott put it plainly: “We did not nominate our strongest candidates.”
Had Republicans run Castle in Delaware and establishment favorites Sue Lowden in Nevada and Jane Norton in Colorado, Lott said, Tuesday would have turned out different.
“With those three we would have won and been sitting at 50 [senators],” he observed.
Another high-profile senator went even further, placing the blame for the Senate GOP’s failure squarely at the feet of Graham’s South Carolina colleague, DeMint.
This Republican senator said that the tea party was the “big winner” by helping bring enormous energy behind GOP candidates Tuesday, but he said that “Sen. DeMint was the big loser.”
“It’s like you’re on the five-yard line ready to score and the quarterback calls the play and some member of your team tackles one of your members and keeps you from scoring,” the senator said. “We came tantalizingly close to a majority.”
“I’m completely mystified by it,” the senator said of DeMint’s tactics.
The senator credited House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner for keeping House Republicans unified behind a common purpose but he said that DeMint took a selfish path that hurt the party’s common cause.
“In the Senate, we had one senator, with almost no following within the caucus, engaged in DeMint-style tactics and kept us from realizing our potential,” the senator said.
The South Carolina conservative endorsed O’Donnell and Buck in the primary but only got behind Angle after she won the nomination. All told, he raised over $7 million for GOP candidates, more than any other senator.
DeMint aides declined to make the senator available for an interview, but depicted Republican leaders as accommodationists while touting the senators who won that they endorsed.
“We’re very proud of the conservative leaders who won their races yesterday,” said Matt Hoskins, a DeMint aide. “Many of these candidates were initially opposed by the Washington establishment yet they prevailed because they had the courage to stand up for conservative principles. At least five new Republicans will be in the Senate next year who will hold Washington accountable by standing up to the big spenders in both political parties.”
DeMint got behind newly-elected GOP senators Pat Toomey (Penn.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Ron Johnson (Wisc.) in primaries even as party officials had varying degrees of skepticism about their general election prospects.
Sources close to DeMint also sought to rebut the criticism they’re taking for their role in pushing conservative candidates by pinning the blame instead on the NRSC’s spending decisions.
“If the establishment is doing finger-pointing this morning it’s because their $8 million gamble in California didn’t pay off,” jabbed a source close to DeMint. “That money could have been used in Colorado, Nevada, Washington and Alaska where the races were much looser and much more winnable. That was a huge fumble.”
Republican Carly Fiorina lost by about 10 percentage points to Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in California.
NRSC Chairman John Cornyn, while declining to publicly criticize DeMint, defended the decision to spend money in the Golden State, saying she was the best Republican candidate the party could have fielded in a good year for the GOP. “But in deep-blue California that wasn’t quite enough,” Cornyn said on a conference call with reporters, noting that Democrats also spent considerable sums trying to snatch such long-shots as Missouri and Kentucky from Republicans.
As for Colorado, Cornyn came prepared, noting that the committee had spent $6.2 million there. In the case of Nevada, he pointed out that Angle raised record sums for her own bid. An NRSC official noted that the third-party group American Crossroads put in considerable sums into both states.
DeMint’s actions have enraged many Republican senators, aides and consultants, many of whom were exchanging cutting emails about him late Tuesday and early Wednesday as it became clear the party would fall short in the Senate.
“I’m glad Jim DeMint is serving as the loyal opposition within our party,” quipped Julie Wadler, a GOP fundraiser and strategist, capturing the contempt held by many Beltway Republicans for the South Carolinian.
But the blame over who lost the Senate isn’t just taking place within Washington. It’s now the turf on which a more fundamental debate within the conservative movement is taking place. It’s a familiar purity vs. pragmatism battle that has been raging since the GOP lost its majority status in the Senate.
Rush Limbaugh, taking issue with a statement Karl Rove made Tuesday night about the “lesson” learned in nominating O’Donnell, argued that both Angle and O’Donnell lost because they were abandoned by party elites.
“Christine O'Donnell could have won were it not for all the backbiting after her primary victory,” Limbaugh said on his radio show Wednesday. “Had the party gotten behind her, had [RNC Chairman Michael] Steele had some on-the-ground money for Nevada, who knows how that might have turned out. We didn't have any money on the ground in Nevada.”
Both O’Donnell and Angle actually raised significant sums of money and the latter got millions of dollars in assistance from third-party conservative groups, including cash that went to voter turnout efforts.
Mike Duncan, the former RNC Chairman who heads American Crossroads, noted that his well-funded organization spent millions on Angle, Paul and Buck.
But, citing his fellow Kentuckian’s triumph, Duncan said: “Obviously some candidates are more skilled than other candidates.”
Graham said the problem with such candidates was not that they didn’t get enough financial assistance, but that they ran campaigns outside the mainstream of states that favor candidates closer to the political middle.
“Hard-right politicians in purple states didn’t turn out very well,” he said. “Candidates who embraced center-right politics in purple states did very well.
Crowing about the large group of more mainline Republicans coming into the Senate such as Ohio’s Rob Portman and Illinois’s Mark Kirk, Graham said: “The solving-the-problem crowd in the Senate grew on Tuesday.”
Other Senate Republicans who bridge the two wings of the party sought to tamp down the anger Wednesday.
“We didn’t have the “A” candidates for this election, but how many election cycles do you have that?” asked Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.). “You got to play the hand you’re dealt.”
Still, even with the election over now, there is little doubt that the fight within the party will continue. Now joined by the likes of Lee and Paul, DeMint is likely to be emboldened to continue his guerilla tactics.
He wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday that read like a combative welcome manual to new GOP senators: “Tea party Republicans were elected to go to Washington and save the country—not be co-opted by the club. So put on your boxing gloves. The fight begins today.”
“When push came to shove, THEY did not enthusiastically back our choices, so THEY have absolutely no right to talk about party unity.”
Exactly- and at the same time, they expect us to bend over backwards to get behind McCain (as the Pres. nominee), Fiorina, Whitman, etc., because they are candidates who can supposedly “win”.
Just sent Graham an e-mail to let him know just who brought in that red blood bath yesterday; it certainly wasn’t the RINOS.
John Cornyn has already received one by me stating the same thing. I’m hoping a good conservative will run against him in the next cycle. I’ll be volunteering for him or her should that happen.
Exactly. Anyway, the self-styled “reach across the aisle” types pushed the likes of McCain for President and look what that got us. What good would more RINOs do us, if we’re trying to pass conservative policies? It’s a football game and more chances for power to them, it’s about the salvation of our country to us. Screw them all, the arrogant self-satisfied nonentities.
What those candidates will do if they win matters too, Lindsey. Or have you forgotten that now that you have your piece of the power pie?
While I do think we could have nominated better candidates than O’Donnell, Angle or Buck, I do NOT think that Castle, Norton or similar “establishment “squishy” Republicans were the answer.
That is why taking back the state legislatures and governorships was so important. Those folks will gain huge in-state name recognition and build their “credentials” for Senate runs in the future.
Poor McConnell and Graham. They thought forcing Bunning out would make their lives easier. Now they get Rand Paul.
Also, as previous posters have pointed out, the 2012 elections could very well be a bloodbath for the Democratic Senate. We have to keep the Tea Party enthusiasm riding high and work to bolster the true conservatives in our local and state governments.
“It seems that anyone who posts something from Politico should ask themselves if they really want to make their fellow Freepers ill.”
My apologies...
But see comment 14.
Just look who is quoted: has-been Trent Lott, little Lindsay Graham, and Julie Wadler, a consultant who runs Votesane PAC, with various political pros and ideologues like ELLEN RATNER!!
We are supposed to take advice from people like this.
Miss Lindsey “I am not Grey,” Graham is up for re-election in 2012. I would rather loose his seat to a democrat then have him back in office.
And anyone with half, no make that a tenth of a brain knows that the RINO’s put all the money out west and left O’Donnel out to dry to prove their point.
VOTE GRAHAM and CORYN OUT IN 2012!
“Gang of 10” and “reach across the aisle” style politics got Mike DeWine fired from the Senate and his is now AG in Ohio. He also barely won because so many Republicans refused to even vote for him to send yet another reminder to sit down and shut up.
Bingo!. Post of the election season.
So you think you can just keep on nominating more Sharon Angles and Christine O’Donnells in the blue and purple states?
This is a recipe for obliteration. I am a conservative but I want no part of it. The result will be more liberal Democrats, and we will all suffer.
Exit polls indicated that Castle would have lost too.
What failure? No less a source than Karl Rove said on Fox last night that the average Senate pickup in a midterm election is three seats. By my count Republicans got five.
Losing the Senate is not such a big deal this year as Zero can’t make 2012 a referendum on the Tea Party if he controls the upper chamber. Meanwhile, over 20 Rat senators are up for election then — while Republicans control the purse strings in the House.
The potential is there to make Der Leader’s life very comfortable for the next two years — defunding his agenda and giving him absolutely nothing in return.
NRSC chairman step down in their election cycle, if not earlier. Since Cornyn isn’t up until 2014 he will want to keep the job, unless he gets a better committee chairmanship.
“The RINOS need to get on board.”
The RINOs need to go straight to Hell (capitalized because it is a place). Just like their demonrat sweety-pies, they need to be driven completely out of public life.
O’Donnel and Angle were flawed candidates.
But the only recipe for obliteration that concerns me is the one that has essentially destroyed Constitutionally-limited government in the United States over the past century. So, other than conceding the point that flawed candidates don’t help either, your other arguments are simply irrelevant.
Mine was directed at the n00b who posted the thread.
Yeah... what he said!
LLS
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Jim DeMint Ping! |
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