A party in tatters
by David Atkins
Let’s put three stories side by side.
First, Rand Paul crushed the straw poll at CPAC:
Though hot off the stove from his now-famous 13-hour filibuster, Rand Paul just narrowly edged Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in 2013. This year, he managed to bring in 31 percent of the 2014 vote, followed distantly by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, with 11 percent. Ben Carson clocked in at No. 3 with 9 percent.
It’s the makings of a hands-off-government political dynasty: Ron Paul has twice won the CPAC poll in years past. But the younger Paul, who’s emerged as a bona fide conservative star in his own right, offers what is potentially a more realistic tie to the party’s establishment base.
Second, the more libertarian Paul faction loses control of the Iowa GOP:
The leader of the Republican Party of Iowa announced without explanation today that he will resign later this month.
Iowa GOP Chairman A.J. Spiker will step down “effective upon election of a new state chairman” on March 29.
The news comes on the same day that the influence on the Iowa GOP from the “liberty” faction, of which Spiker was a part, was significantly diminished as mainstream Republicans turned out in force to reclaim dominance.
The majority of GOP state convention delegates elected today are pro-Branstad Republicans, who showed up in large numbers to at-times tedious and lengthy county conventions typically frequented by only the most diehard activists.
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s re-election campaign led a big push to get more Republicans to turn out to the neighborhood and county meetings where the people who influence party business are elected. It was a reaction to the very well organized takeover by the liberty faction two years ago.
Third, establishment Republicans are even more aggressively trying to destroy embarrassing insurgents in their own base than before:
This election season, Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are taking a much harder line as they sense the majority within reach. Top congressional Republicans and their allies are challenging the advocacy groups head on in an aggressive effort to undermine their credibility. The goal is to deny them any Senate primary victories, cut into their fund-raising and diminish them as a future force in Republican politics.
“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said in an interview, referring to the network of activist organizations working against him and two Republican incumbents in Kansas and Mississippi while engaging in a handful of other contests. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
Elevating the nasty intramural brawl to a new level, Mr. McConnell on Friday began airing a radio ad in Kentucky that attacked both Matt Bevin, the businessman challenging him in the Republican primary, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, one of the groups trying to oust Mr. McConnell and a political action committee that has been a particular thorn in his side.
Mr. McConnell’s ad, his first singling out the Senate Conservatives Fund, raises a criticism that Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republicans have leveled at the activists — that they are fund-raising and business enterprises more than political operations. The ad refers to unnamed news media reports that assert that the PAC “solicits money under the guise of advocating for conservative principles but then spends it on a $1.4 million luxury townhouse with a wine cellar and hot tub in Washington, D.C.”
This is not the sign of a party and a movement on the rise. This is rats on a sinking ship.
I know it may not feel that way at times. But these guys are in trouble and they know it. The only things keeping them afloat are a coalition of aging voters, Koch money, and temporarily gerrymandered districts.
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