Infidels and heretics

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GOP senator says Tea Party challenges ‘killed off’ efforts at Republican majority

Sen. Dick Lugar (Ind.) facing a primary contest from the right in his reelection bid said past Tea Party-backed challenges had “killed off” Republican efforts to take the Senate in the past and could undermine a GOP majority again in 2012.

“A Republican majority in the Senate is very important, and Republicans who are running for reelection ought to be supported by people who want to see that majority,” Lugar said in an interview which aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

“I think the majority of Tea Party people understand that too,” he added.

Lugar who is facing a tough primary challenge from Tea Party-backed Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) said he was the best GOP option to win the seat and that past attempts by grassroots groups to install candidates they found more conservative had backfired.

“If I was not the nominee it might be lost,” he said of his seat. “Republicans lost the seats before in Nevada and New Jersey and Colorado where there were people who were claiming they wanted somebody who was more of their Tea Party aspect but they killed off the Republican majority.”

“This is one of the reasons why we have a minority in the Senate right now,” he claimed.

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This is one of those zombie lies that keeps popping back up. During the last election cycle (the only one affected by the Tea Party so far) The Republican party gained six seats in the Senate. They needed four more to take control. Not one GOP incumbent lost their seat. (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska won reelection despite losing the primary to a Tea Party candidate.)

The claim that the Tea Party “lost” the Senate is based on the assumption that the GOP would have won four more seats had the establishment candidates won the primaries. But there is little proof that is the case – mostly some pre-primary polls. They might have won one or two – or maybe not.

It could just as easily be argued that without the support and enthusiasm of the Tea Party the Republicans would have won fewer seats and might not have taken control of the House either.

The Tea Party is a conservative movement and I’m a liberal, so why does this matter? Because the establishments of both parties have a vested interest in maintaining power, and neither establishment represents their party’s rank-and-file voters.

The Tea Party originated as an astroturf organization intended to gin-up opposition to Barack Obama. But it quickly morphed into a genuine grass-roots organization as the monster turned on its creators with primary challengers. Suddenly the GOP establishment joined with Democrats in portraying Tea Partiers as lunatics.

Some people think that the Occupiers are the Democratic equivalent of the Tea Party. This is not true. OWS has no interest in challenging the Democratic establishment by fielding primary candidates. But if they did they could expect similar treatment.

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Ask not what your party can do for you

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House Dem: Liberal groups need to back off for party to win in 2012

Liberal groups need to stay out of Democratic primaries if the party is going to retake the House majority, according to a conservative Massachusetts Democrat.

Rep. Stephen Lynch was one of several Democrats who faced an aggressive primary challenge from the left in 2010. His challenger Mac D’Alessandro, a former top official with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), received almost $300,000 from labor groups for his campaign.

[...]

Clearing primaries for members and discouraging liberal groups from spending against incumbents should be a priority for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he said. “It would definitely help, I think. You need to talk to those groups.”

FTW comment goes to somebody named “John Puma”:

Great, another “we can only win by NOT distinguishing ourselves from the GOP” idiot.

If you think Lynch is a lone-nut think again. They may not admit it publicly but his pro-incumbent beliefs are widely shared on both sides of the aisle in Washington.

Look at what happened last year on the GOP side – Tea Partiers aggressively challenged incumbents in the Republican primaries, winning many of the contests. Most of those challengers went on to win in the Republican tsunami last November.

But the Village Idiots focused on a few races (like Delaware and Nevada) to argue that the Tea Party cost the Republicans several seats and possibly the Senate majority.

Speaking of idiots, let’s check in with Booman:

I think it is safe to say that progressives did not cause the loss of a single seat in Congress through the use of primary challenges to incumbents or moderate candidates. But that isn’t stopping some people from whining.

What? That actually makes sense. Has Booman finally seen the light?

It’s possible to screw things up by adopting unrealistic purity tests. We all saw that happen with the Tea Party. But it didn’t happen on our side. We lost almost every single competitive contest in the country, regardless of funding, the quality of the candidate, the campaign strategy, or the quality of the opponent. We lost because our base didn’t turn out and their base did. It’s that simple. Under the circumstances, nothing in the known universe could have saved Blanche Lincoln, or countless other backstabbers. But voting progressive wouldn’t have saved them either. In the last election cycle, the only thing that could have mitigated disaster would have been something that created real fear or real excitement in our base. Individual candidates had no control over that. As for excitement, our opinion leaders were too busy nit-picking to do anything but crush what little excitement that might have existed.

Sometimes, it’s just not your cycle.

Okay, there’s the Booman we all know.

“Our” base didn’t turn out because they were disgusted with the 2% less evil DINOcrats. And now Obama is signaling he plans to take a hard right turn for the next two years.

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