With Sen. Lamar Alexander’s victory Thursday in Tennessee, it became official: every Republican incumbent senator running for re-election this year defeated their conservative challengers in GOP primaries.
Alexander, a Republican senator since 2003, had been criticized by challenger Joe Carr, a representative in the state House, for not being conservative enough.
But Carr, like other challengers to incumbent Republican senators this cycle, failed to take out his target — the Associated Press declared Alexander the winner at about 9:30 p.m. Thursday.
This was the last chance this primary cycle for conservatives to replace Republican incumbent senators on the ballot in November.
I alluded to this very thing in a previous post Mick although Alexander's race had yet to occur. But what the Tea party did was force these guys to run far more to the right then they are used to. Now it's back to the center for the main elections! Centrist country you know.
ReplyDeleteCheck the margins of victory over the past few primary election cycles.
ReplyDeleteI was gonna respond check the demographics of the voters, but then I realized there's only so many ways you can divide a group of old white men and it's already well established the Tea Party has no equals when is comes to dividing white men. Ayn Rand, in one of her essays that was complaining about leftist leaning protestors in the 60's, noted that those groups were ultimately successful in pulling the entire political sphere to the left because they had the benefit of purity. Since they were never a threat to win a major election, they could basically be as bat shit crazy as they wanted to and do nothing but criticize every move made by those who actually had to be adults and get something done.
DeleteA reality of life William is that nothing lasts forever. As Rick alluded to here, the Teas have jerked the entire Republican party to the right DURING a trend, IMO, wherein the entire country has been trending right since Reagan. You've never been one to discuss a possibility that the Teas won't succeed in establishing their Anarchist Sharia, but now that they have carved out their own bell curve of voters from the Republican party, what next? They are dominating Boehnors agenda and congress and are blocking tons of legislation. While this makes you stiff with glee, the approval of congress is much lower than even Obama. I'd say your party is accomplishing much more by essentially being a minority party.