The Tea Party is Over: @Allahpundit and Mitch McConnell Declare Victory

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It’s “Spring Time for Mitch” over there at RINOville:

Politico has a pre-election postmortem on how McConnell beat back the tea party, although most of it will be familiar to you if you’ve been following the race even casually. . . .
Between McConnell’s easy ride to victory and Lindsey Graham’s trouble-free reelection campaign in South Carolina thus far, it’s worth asking just how vulnerable GOP incumbents are to tea-party primary challenges anymore. Philip Klein surveys the landscape and says, “Not very.”

So, all conservative grassroots enthusiasm is over, and there is now zero hope that the GOP can ever be more than Democrat Lite. And what are the chances that in November, people will stampede to the polls to vote for the Boring Old White Guy Party?

 

51 comments

  3. The Tea Party will stay home in droves come the general election wherever the establishment is on the ballot. Look for McConnell to lose when Bevin could have won.

  5. The VichyGOP has a way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I doubt I’ll have a real choice in my home state. But I am NOT voting LOTE again. I am done. I’ll vote for the Constitution Party if that is my only choice…

  6. Vote Constitution or an actual Conservative R. if you got one. I wish we had Stacy Campfield over in our part of TN.. But even in East TN, I don’t think he’s all that popular with the RINOs in N’ville.

  7. Not sure I can follow the logic there. How could Bevin have won a general election when he couldn’t even turn out enough Tea Partiers to support him in the KY primary to help him make a more respectable showing there even against “a boring old white guy”? It was a massive blowout in a Tea Party-friendly state.

    It would seem that either 1) the Tea Party has a habit of staying at home “in droves” on election days and can’t be bothered to vote even for their own allegedly more exciting candidates when given the opportunity, or 2) the droves of Tea Partiers of whom you speak are actually voting for candidates to represent their interests in Washington other than the heroes the more hardline right on the internet would prefer they select.

    Today’s unhappy outcome for you is probably #2 & a reflection of all those pre-election polls which indicated that a majority of real-life Tea Party voters (as opposed to online website commenters) in KY planned to support McConnell rather than your own apparent favorite Mr. Bevin today.

    You know, it is a wee bit ironic that the Tea Party Establishment is lately getting more & more disconnected with the real men and real women who belong to real local grassroots Tea Party orgs, who attend real meetings, raise real money, man real phone banks, do voter ed with their real neighbors and, ahem, actually show up & cast real votes on primary days for the candidates they support rather than the ones a bunch of self-appointed national TP ‘leaders’, online bloggers & and phantom website commenters think they should support, no?

    I mean, the numbers at the ballot box, election after election, don’t lie.

    So who’s more out of touch with “the base” now?

  8. ” it’s worth asking just how vulnerable GOP incumbents are to tea-party primary challenges anymore.”

    Tea Party never was about throwing Republicans out of office. That was a meme that came later once the movement had been hijacked. Originally it was a movement of local groups holding their local politicians responsible for their votes. After quite a number of success stories, some people came in at the national level to capitalize on the brand and try to give the movement a national focus (and line their pockets with money). In the process, the focus got shifted away from local groups concerned with local politicians voting on issues of local importance into one where half the country is minding someone else’s business and ignoring their own. People tweeting all night to people in Albania about Bevin or Broun when they don’t even live in KY or GA while all the time ignoring that local city council that just voted to give their government workers a 10% raise and gold plated benefits packages. The “Tea Party” has become a giant squirrel and the focus has been shifted to attacking Republicans and helping Democrats (that way these national organizers can collect money from both disaffected Republicans AND Democrats).

    If you really want to revitalize the Tea Party movement you need to go back to your local tea party group and get involved in your local politics again. Remember all those local town hall meetings back in 2009 and 2010? Need to keep doing that.

  9. Do you suppose more voters would “stampede” for vote for the sort of pathetic, lousy candidates who carried the “tea party” label this cycle?

    For a guy who supports cockfighting AND dog fighting, or a doctor who posts patient X-rays on Facebook, or a candidate who thinks the 9/11 Truthers have a point, or one who thinks there were dinosaurs on Earth 6000 years ago, or a campaign that causes itself problems by lying to the press? No, these candidates would flop in the general, just like Akin and Mourdock.

    There’s no real magic to politics. When you run lousy candidates, they lose.

    Those who would rather see Harry Reid have another Congress as Majority Leader can stay home licking their butthurt. Those with half a functioning brain already know what to do.

  10. Bevin is an idiot and a loser. It’s 2014, not 1954. Even then, it would have been dicey to come out in favor of cockfighting and dog fighting.

    But it’s anyone’s right to stay home. But the inherent stupidity of the idea that you won’t support the winner, but would whine like a little girl if your guy won and McConnell didn’t support him shows you as an unreliable ally.

  11. Entirely self-inflicted, too. Although it is possible they were complicit in trying to get out the “is there an affair?” story through bloggers and it blew up in their faces.

    Either way, not a well-run campaign.

  13. My recollection from the events in 2009 and 2010 is that all the Tea Party rallies were first of all against bailouts of the irresponsible, be they delinquent mortgagees or negligent bankers. There was also a general sentiment against debt, deficits, and excessive spending. After the Democrats passed ObamaCare, that was also protested.

    The problem is some people and groups decided they could speak for the movement, and that it was endorsing every issue they liked, even though NONE were ever mentioned at a Tea Party rally. People donating to these groups need to keep up with the news, it’s a huge scam. They aren’t spending much (< 5%) on candidates, campaigns, or issue advertising. It's going for salaries, mostly for friends, family, and close associates, and paying the expenses for their travel and entertainment.

  14. “There’s no real magic to politics. When you run lousy candidates, they lose.”

    Yes. Yes, they do:

    Unconfirmed: “A Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll released Sunday showed only 39 percent of Bevin voters would support McConnell. And of the 61 percent of Bevin voters who wouldn’t support McConnell, 25 percent said they would cross
    party lines to vote against McConnell, the Courier-Journal reported.”

    McConnell is now in a tough spot. He’s demonized/demoralized the base so much that most will stay home on election day – the rest will vote for his opponent!

    In other news, President Romney called to tell Mitch that he “needs to tighten up his GoTV efforts.”

    Bwahahahahahahahaha!

  16. Considering your grace in “winning,” I can’t imagine why conservatives would want to stay home.
    Stay classy, Adjoran…stay classy.

  18. If I want whiny defeatism I always have Ace. The electoral math shows that the Tea Party has picked up more seats for the GOP than the GOP mainstream. http://tinyurl.com/opee8ol We have no reason to go away.

    (Yes, I referenced Dave Weigel but the races he referenced happened)

  19. Dude! I can’t stay home AND vote for Wendy Davis to hate-f*** Cornyn. Which should I do?

  22. Adjoran is the resident GOPe shill. It’s all he knows, so go easy on the poor fella.

  26. The problem is that you can’t run candidates too far removed from the ideology of the people doing the voting. Matt Bevin would have done MUCH better, in my opinion, finding a deep red district somewhere in KY and run for a House seat in that district where the voters more closely match his ideology. KY is a purple state. They have a Dem governor and the lower house of their Legislature is controlled by Dems. They have more D voters than R voters. Dana Loesch said it best that you can’t expect to change an electorate by running a candidate of the desired ideology. Buck in Colorado did just exactly what I suggested Bevin should have done. He found a “red” House district to run for and the former holder of that seat is going to run for Senate.

    TP candidates have a dismal showing in “purple” and “blue” states and people don’t seem to understand that the Democrats have been instrumental in that. Democrats championed Angle in the primary in 2010 and then turned on her after. The Democrats WANT to run against TP candidates. In fact, it was such a fundamental part of the DNC strategy this fall that now having lost most of their races, Debbie Whatshername-Schultz is forced into trying to paint the entire Republican Party as Tea Party so they can run against that brand. She said yesterday that the TP had “engulfed” the entire Republican Party or some such crap. That was a last ditch desperation effort to try to create Tea Party to run against when there isn’t any.

    There ARE some good anti-establishment candidates out there. I would endorse Kingston over Perdue in Georgia, for example. Larry Kudlow last night on the John Batchelor Show had nothing but praise for Kingston, says he’s known him for years, says Perdue is a “taxer” and that Kingston is a real “supply side” guy. Good enough for me.

    Also, there were plenty of good anti-establishment candidates in 2010, too. John Boehner and Eric Cantor poured over $500,000 of their own money into some of those campaigns kickstarting the campaigns of people like Tim Scott when he was running for House and Allen West. You just need to pick GOOD candidates that aren’t too far removed from the people doing the voting.

  28. I’m not your ally since I don’t appreciate people who support traitors (used in the technical sense of the term) like McConnell. He views the base of the party of which he is an ostensible leader, as the enemy to be “crushed”. Well sorry Adjoran, if he doesn’t want the conservative vote then he shouldn’t be surprised when conservatives don’t vote for him.

    In fact, McConnell should be punished by conservatives for his Obama tail sniffing behavior.

  29. The reason you may have a hard time with the logic may be that you haven’t done the math. Let me educate you.

    A. It wasn’t a “massive blowout”. McConnell lost 4 out of 10 votes against a small businessman who had very little money. McConnell went very negative on Bevin which does work if you have the money to pound on your opponent day after day – which McConnell did.

    B. Grimes got 300,000 votes whereas McConnell got only 200,000 votes in the primary.

    C. The split between parties at the legislative level is down the middle in KY yet Democratic registration outpaces Republican registration 53.8 percent to 38.5 percent right now. This combined with the notorious penchant Dems have for cheating should trouble the GOPe.

    D. Grimes will be very well funded against the minority leader. She will probably have as much if not more to spend than he so the advantage he had over Bevin will be nonexistent when it comes to Grimes.

    E. Now, the most important number. According to a Courier-Journal poll, 61 percent of Bevin voters won’t support McConnell in the general and a whopping 25 percent said they would cross party lines to vote against McConnell. So McConnell gets 200,000 votes and Bevin gets about 130,000 votes. Of those, 61% will not vote for him in the general election and some will even vote against him.

    McConnell needs EVERY ONE of those votes in order to be competitive. So his only hope is to do what he has done in the past: lie like an Obama to the base that he will mend his wicked ways and will fight the statists instead of being one of them.

    Meanwhile, Bevin would have picked up votes from every conservative in KY and would then have had to appeal to the mush middle and to Democrats where McConnell’s voters are. Would those voters refuse to vote for Bevin? Maybe so. We’ll never know.

  30. It is what it is. Say what you will but McConnell and Graham out campaigned their opponents. If you are going to run in opposition to an Establishment Republican in the primaries, you can’t underestimate their ability to engage in politics and the advantage being the incumbent entails (it is not fair, but it is the way things are).

    There is a logic to this, because you better be a good campaigner to win the general. These are just two races, suck it up and learn from it.

  31. Why is it inherently stupid?

    The Tea Party has been clear on it’s political philosophy versus the establishment’s. Hence, why they won’t support the “winner”.

  33. “only 39 percent of Bevin voters would support McConnell.”

    Because they are Democrats pretending to be “conservatives”. If they aren’t going to support McConnell then they are Democratic Party supporters. It’s that simple. They are pretending to be all conservative but are not really interested in advancing conservatism and are quite satisfied seeing the Senate pushed farther to the left. They are ConservaCrats. Nobody needs them. Let them do whatever they want. Let’s see, assuming most, if not all Bevin supporters voted yesterday and considering the dismal turnout, 39% of them aren’t going to make much difference in the general. If they want to get a Democrat elected just out of spite, then to heck with them. I don’t care what they say and it’s time they stopped calling themselves Republicans. They aren’t. THEY are the RINOs.

  34. Do unto Cornyn as Cornyn has done unto you. I’m sure that’s still legal in Hondo.

  35. As if voting for the Turtle will advance conservatism. At times, a tactical retreat is necessary and giving something to the enemy is just good judgment. McConnell is the greater evil here and prevents the ascendance of a conservative. McConnell must go and the sooner the better. Even if it means allowing a Dimocrap to hold the seat for 6 years.

  36. Our local Tea Party organization doesn’t support any one candidate. They focus on the issues. Individual members may support one candidate or another, but talking about endorsements at meetings is frowned upon.

    Lindsey Graham’s trouble-free reelection campaign in South Carolina

    I wouldn’t say Graham’s campaign is trouble free. He’s polling at 40% right now and his closest challenger, Lee Bright, is polling over 20%. Graham has a lot of money, but if we can force him into a runoff, we have a chance to defeat him.

    Our problem is SC is an open primary state, so democrats can poison the well, so to speak, by voting for Graham in the primary, knowing their candidate doesn’t have a chance no matter who wins the republican nomination.

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