Archive for the ‘Tea Party’ Category
Lee hires tea party strategist who tried to take out Hatch
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. Mike Lee takes a few questions as the Tea Party Express comes to Utah to endorse for 2016 and express support for his efforts to transform the country during a press conference at the Grand America Hotel on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013.
GOP politics Utah senator tries to broaden appeal yet stay true to conservative cause.
Washington A tea-party strategist who tried two years ago to defeat Sen. Orrin Hatch and helped topple Sen. Bob Bennett before that will now be a key architect in the re-election effort of Hatchs colleague, Sen. Mike Lee.
Lee has hired Russ Walker, the national political director of the tea party umbrella group FreedomWorks, to serve in the same role for Lees 2016 campaign.
FreedomWorks spent nearly $1 million in 2012 trying to unseat Sen. Orrin Hatch, and Walker was at the forefront of the effort.
"There is no reason why Orrin Hatch should represent Utah," Walker told Politico at the time. Hatch, after spending millions, won re-election.
It was a different story in 2010, when FreedomWorks and Walker helped Lee take out Bennett. The group has been a big supporter of Lees Senate actions; He is one of only two senators with a 100 percent voting record on the FreedomWorks scorecard.
The establishment Republican Party has tried to tamp down intraparty challenges in recent years as FreedomWorks and similar groups back challenges to incumbents in bruising, money-fueled primaries.
While Lee has sought to broaden his appeal in the last year with a conservative-populist approach, his hiring of Walker suggests Lee doesnt plan to walk away from the groups that got him to the Senate chamber.
Lee spokesman Brian Phillips says Walker, who has worked for Republican candidates during his career and for FreedomWorks, or its previous incarnations, for 14 years, can help the cause of party unity.
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Lee hires tea party strategist who tried to take out Hatch
Letter: Dold is a Tea Party candidate
Lynn Sweets column in [the Aug. 28] Deerfield Review was right on the mark. Not only did she show how Karl Roves Crossroads GPS manipulates and creates facts to fit its message, but it exposed Bob Dold for what he is, a Tea Party candidate in a district that voted twice to elect President Obama. Of course his campaign is upset for the only way for Dold to run in the 10th District is to portray himself as an independent moderate. But note that the two PACs that are pouring money into his campaign advertisements are the Tea Party controlled Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who never met a regulation they didnt hate. Unfortunately for Dold, Rove and the chamber know a fellow traveler when they see one.
Far from independent, Dold voted with the Tea Party caucus 82 percent of the time, which means he voted dozens of time to deny tens of millions of Americans health insurance, supported literally dozens of bills permitting big companies to pour their waste into our waters and air, supported the government shut down, and voted every time for Paul Ryans budget, which would have slashed spending on social programs to virtually nothing. Ryans budget also eliminates Medicare and, depending on which version you look at, either hands social security over to Wall Street or phases it out entirely. This is what the chamber means when it talks about regulations reduced and economic freedom.
This is the real Bob Dold, a man who voted 82 percent of the time against the wishes of the majority of this congressional district. The New York Times called Dold a Tea Party candidate in 2010 and his votes in Congress won him the label of one of Speaker Boehners 100. Why would we want to send this guy back to Congress?
Dr. Laurence D. Schiller, Deerfield
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Letter: Dold is a Tea Party candidate
E.J. Dionne Jr.: Moderates fighting back against tea party
WASHINGTON The missing component in the machinery of American politics has been moderate-to-liberal Republicanism, and the gears of government are grinding very loudly. You wonder if Kansas and Alaska have come up with a solution to this problem.
In Kansas, Democrat Chad Taylor shook up the Senate race by dropping out last week, giving an independent candidate, Greg Orman, a clean shot at the incumbent, Pat Roberts.
At least one poll showed Orman with a 10-point lead over the 78-year-old Roberts in a two-way race. Republicans are so afraid of Orman that Kansas' Republican (and unabashedly ideological) secretary of state, Kris Kobach, used a technicality to keep Taylor's name on the November ballot anyway. Taylor is challenging the decision.
In Alaska, Democrat Byron Mallott ended his candidacy for governor and chose instead to run for lieutenant governor on a ticket led by an independent candidate, Bill Walker. By combining forces, Walker and Mallott hope to oust Republican Gov. Sean Parnell.
Because of the revolution in Republican politics spearheaded by the tea party, these should not be treated as isolated episodes. They are both signs that moderates, particularly moderate Republicans, are fighting back.
The safe journalistic trope is that that both of our major parties have become more "extreme." This is simply not true. It's the Republican Party that's veered far off center. To deny the fact is to disrespect the hard work of conservatives in taking over the GOP.
By contrast, there are still plenty of moderates in the Democratic Party. They include Sens. Mark Pryor in Arkansas, Mark Begich in Alaska, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, and Kay Hagan in North Carolina. All of them are threatened in this fall's elections by conservative or right-wing Republicans. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is another moderate on the ballot this year, but so far, he seems safe.
On the other hand, outright liberals have been losing primaries in the Republican Party since the late 1960s, particularly in Senate races. In the House, the few remaining liberal Republicans (one thinks of Maryland's Connie Morella and Iowa's Jim Leach) were defeated because Democrats in their districts finally decided that electing even Republicans they liked only empowered the party's increasingly conservative congressional leadership.
As for the Republican establishment, it may have overcome many tea party challenges this year, but it is increasingly captive of the right wing.
This summer, conservative writers Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru offered an insightful analysis of the tea party-establishment dynamic in an article in National Review appropriately titled "Establishment Tea." Lowry and Ponnuru argued that the establishment candidates who triumphed did so largely on the tea party's terms, though the authors put the matter somewhat more politely. "Candidates who make the case that they will fight for conservative ideas, and not just serve time," they wrote, "can win tea party support."
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E.J. Dionne Jr.: Moderates fighting back against tea party