The political implosion of the GOP

"The hardest job for a politician today is to have the courage to be a moderate. It's easy to take an extreme position" - Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978), U.S. Senator from Minnesota 1949-1965 and 1971-1978 and 38th Vice President 1965-1969.

The recent senatorial primary results from three key states have given us a taste of what is to come this fall. A couple of weeks after an unprecedented outcome in Utah, where a sitting, two term Republican senator was defeated in his party's state primary for the upcoming November election, nervous candidates in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Arkansas watched closely to see if they were next to incur the wrath of a deeply frustrated electorate. The results from those races show that Democrats need to be concerned for the future of a hefty number of elected members come November; however the really big story here is that the Republican Party is eating itself alive - more anon.

The history of politics in the United States shows that in off year elections (i.e. when there is no presidential election) the party that currently holds the White House suffers some, and often significant losses in the congressional and senatorial races that are commonly referred to as the 'mid-term' elections. Congressmen (a generic term that refers to male and female representatives) are up for election every two years, are elected to the House of Representatives and are 438 in number. The United States Senate on the other hand contains 100 members who are elected to six year terms. Depending on timing, there may be anything from twenty to forty senatorial seats up for grabs in off year elections.

There is one thing we know for sure. There is huge anti-incumbent sentiment among the electorate right now. It is highly likely that this will reflect itself in Democrats losing some congressional and senatorial seats in November. As I mentioned earlier, this is par for the course in American politics. However, we are beginning to see a trend emerge from the primaries that have taken place thus far and it is not one that augurs well for Republicans. Here is a quick summary.

First, there is the Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist. Charlie is a moderate, which means that he holds some views that appeal to Democratic voters. He sided with President Obama in 2009 by voicing his support in favor of the president $875B stimulus package, which brought down on him the ire of the Republican establishment and the Tea Party nut jobs. With his governorship due to end this year, Crist is running for the Senate. Until a month ago he was running as a Republican. That was until the GOP establishment came out in support of Crist's opponent, the far more conservative Tea Party candidate, Marco Rubio, resulting in Crist breaking with the Republican Party and changing his affiliation to Independent. And yes, he is still running for the Senate.

A number of weeks ago, incumbent GOP senator Bob Bennett of Utah, a man with a record of voting conservative 86% of the time, was unceremoniously dumped from the November state ballot by losing his party's primary election. The reason? He wasn't conservative enough. In Kentucky, an eye surgeon named Rand Paul, the unelected son of longtime Republican congressman, former Liberterian Party candidate for President and darling of the Tea Party movement, Ron Paul, defeated the establishment Republican candidate in that state's GOP senatorial primary this month.

You see the pattern emerging here? Existing, well established and respected GOP incumbents, many of whom lean to the far right politically, are being tossed out on their backsides because they are deemed to be not conservative enough by the Tea Party mob who are vying to take control of the Republican Party. There is a bitter, ideological war going on within the GOP that has the potential to tear it apart.

Anti-incumbent feeling isn't confined to Republicans. Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania (yes, the same Arlen Spector of the Warren Commission who authored the infamous 'magic bullet theory' to explain how one bullet inflicted seven separate wounds on President Kennedy and Governor Connolly in Dallas 47 years ago) has lost his state's Democratic primary election for a possible 6th term. Why is this important and why was he defeated? There are two plausible reasons; a) even though Spector was a senator for 30 years he was the victim of the anti-incumbent tsunami that we can see building across the country, or b) which in my opinion is the more likely, Spector, for 29 of his 30 years in the senate was a Republican! He switched parties in 2009 to become a Democrat, openly acknowledging that if he remained a Republican this year he would likely have a very difficult primary challenge. Guess what, he changed parties and still lost. Here was a guy who voted for the Iraq War, voted for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans and in the end I think Pennsylvania Democrats just couldn't get the image of Arlen Spector the Republican out of their minds. He lost to a retired three star admiral and two term congressman named Joe Sestak.

Finally, let me say this about the so called Tea Party tidal wave. At a post election rally, Rand Paul said that he wants to be part of a revolution to "take the country back". Really? Back where exactly? Back to 30 years of Reagan/Bush economics and a doctrine of complete deregulation of the banks and the financial markets? Back to an era of tax cuts for only the top 1% of earners? Back to a policy of pre-emptive war and unilateralism? How far back does he, and the so called Tea Party movement, want to take us - 1776? Give me a break.....