Tuesday, November 03, 2009

The Non-Existent Fight for the Soul of the Republican Party

Stories like this one must be written by people who never experienced political swings before.

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.


Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.


But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined...

These high-stakes primaries, pitting the activist wing of the party against the establishment wing, stand to have a profound impact on the 2010 election landscape since they will create significant problems for moderate candidates recruited by the national party precisely because they appear well-suited to win in places that are not easily — or even plausibly — won by conservative candidates.

ZOMG! You mean the primaries aren't just locked up by some establishment candidates??? Who would have thought that voters determine who their party's candidate for the general election will be in the primaries???

Seriously, did these reporters have to take civics (or some variation thereof) to graduate from high school (let alone college)?

Primaries always have several candidates with a variety of views. Voters pick from among the candidates which one best matches their own values and beliefs. Then everybody votes on the party candidates in a general election. This idea that some Republicans are going to pull a Scozzafava and vote for Democrats because--gasp!--the Republican candidate doesn't support ACORN is nonsense. Or that independents aren't going to vote with the GOP because the indies think they have just too much money and want the government to have more of it.

These are nutty ideas that Democrats wish were true.