Tea leaves: Republican Establishment Still Rules
The widely anticipated civil war within the Republican Party is off to a decidedly dull start.
Defying predictions from last year, early evidence suggests that party leaders and even most grass-roots activists are more interested in winning elections than in ideological bloodletting.
A spate of recent developments points to two conclusions about the modern Republican Party that were in doubt as recently as a few months ago.
The first is that for all the talk about tea party insurgents and fulminating radio and cable commentators taking over, the GOP remains above all an establishment party.
GOP leaders easily swatted down a proposed “purity test” for candidates at last week’s Republican National Committee meeting — an indication that party officials are no more willing to turn over the keys to right-wing activists now than they were during the Bush years.
In Illinois, Rep. Mark Kirk is hardly a conservative heartthrob — and some activists are openly contemptuous of what they perceive as his moderation — but he easily won the Republican Senate primary there Tuesday night, against a more conservative, underfunded opponent, in part because he is seen as having the best chance to capture President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat.
Recent elections also suggest a second trend: It may not be all that hard in a favorable political environment for skilled Republicans to bridge or blur the ideological divide between the conservative activists who dominate the party and the more moderate swing voters whom candidates need to win office.
Scott Brown has become the toast of Republicans nationally by winning Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts even though he supports abortion rights. Conversely, Republican Bob McDonnell defied predictions that he was too far to the right to attract moderate voters to win a landslide in the Virginia governor’s race.
Much about recent events reflects basic politics: Smart politicians have always calibrated their ideological profile to fit local circumstances.
But after conservative activists chased liberal Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava out of a special election in New York’s 23rd District last fall, some worried that activists were pushing the party so far to the right that it would be unable to compete nationally.
Earlier last year, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs crowed that Rush Limbaugh was the real leader of the Republican Party.
So far, though, it seems clear that Republicans who deviate from party orthodoxy or downplay social issues can be successful as long as they are not egregiously out of step with the base and are savvy enough to harness populist anger at Washington to their benefit.
“This is a reform impulse,” former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove said of the anti-Washington, anti-Obama mood that has fueled the tea parties. “Our candidates have to be willing to talk about spending and deficits and the expansion of government in people’s lives in a way that people find compelling and authentic.”
Former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who has regularly urged his party to be more open to moderates, said Republicans like McDonnell and Brown have smartly tapped into populist outrage by “seeing it as an opportunity.”
“Wide-awake leaders don’t need to be threatened by the tea parties,” Davis said, adding: “It’s easier to include coalitions when you don’t have to govern.”
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“As a general rule, I think the tea party folks are not going to be that huge a problem for Republicans,” agreed longtime political analyst Charlie Cook. “They can pull in a bunch of disaffected people that haven’t been involved in politics and in most cases can be channeled in constructive ways.”
Few party officials, of course, want to sound critical of the tea party activists or Limbaugh’s listeners, for fear of offending the very voters they need to keep winning. But strategists say the big-tent approach of their recent successful candidates is offering the way forward.
“It’s becoming clear that the calculus for winning in this environment has much more to do with understanding the underlying economic anxiety of the entire electorate, versus just focusing on the anger of one sliver of it,” said Republican consultant Kevin Madden.
It was tea party passions that helped seed Brown’s upset in Massachusetts. Conservative activist money and volunteers flowed from across the country into the Bay State.
But Brown himself was a party regular, not an insurgent, and his campaign was guided from the beginning by the veteran political strategists who helped elect Mitt Romney governor and who ran his presidential campaign. These Romney hands were quietly aided by the money and strategic guidance of the National Republican Senatorial Committee as well as by top-notch, out-of-state pollsters and consultants.
Many activists may be unaware of what a mainstream political figure Brown is. Even now, weeks after his election, conservatives are forwarding a 1½-minute video under the subject line “WOW! Powerful! Massachusetts Scott Brown Commercial.” It has gotten more than 1.4 million views.
It depicts Brown as a modern-day freedom fighter, comparing him to a revolutionary warrior and Democratic Washington to the British crown, with phrases such as “liberty” and “tyranny” sprinkled about and images of last fall’s tea party march in Washington in the finale.
But the ads that actually lifted Brown to victory were conventional, though smartly crafted, spots portraying him as a truck-driving Everyman — not a lamp-carrying colonist. In fact, it wasn’t Paul Revere but, rather, Democrat John F. Kennedy whom Brown was likened to in one of his commercials. In addition to the now-famous one of him driving his black GMC, another ad showed him working the triple deckers in gritty South Boston. The message was that he was safe for Democrats — or those who were raised as Democrats — to support, not that he wanted to start another revolution.
In Virginia, McDonnell also enjoyed great enthusiasm from conservative activists in his gubernatorial bid. And, unlike Brown, he was a genuine ideologue, having made his name in the state Legislature as a social conservative.
But McDonnell’s campaign was more Tom Davis than it was Pat Robertson, as the graduate of the latter’s law school ran straight toward the center with a campaign stressing jobs, education and transportation.
At times, especially when he was downstate, McDonnell did tie his Democratic opponent to a federal government that the Republican depicted as encroaching on the authority of the states. But the rhetorical bones thrown out for the benefit of the tea partiers were not what was in the carefully tested ads that blanketed Northern Virginia, dominated by more moderate voters, in which the candidate stressed his local upbringing.
There was grumbling at times from Christian conservatives that McDonnell was ignoring their issues, but after losing consecutive governor’s races and both Senate seats, the right wing was more hungry for a win than agitated that one of its own wasn’t railing against abortion and gay marriage.
In Illinois, Kirk, a moderate congressman from Chicago’s North Shore suburbs, cruised to victory Tuesday against the more conservative Patrick Hughes. Like Brown a cultural moderate, Kirk had taken flak from tea party activists over his vote in favor of cap-and-trade legislation on carbon emissions and others on the right over his support for abortion rights.
But on most fiscal and national security issues, Kirk is in the party’s mainstream, and he dispatched the underfunded Hughes by 37 percent.
And in the Brown model, Kirk has already begun a general election campaign that both appeals to local sensibilities (decrying the state’s rampant corruption and one-party control) and reaches conservatives (hitting Democrats on spending).
That there is no conservative coup taking place within the GOP was also made clear as the national party met in Hawaii last week. A much-discussed “purity resolution” that would have barred party support and funding for candidates who didn’t meet an issue test wasn’t brought up for a vote. In fact, before the general session even began, the state party chairmen unanimously passed a resolution expressing their opposition to such an idea.
What was ultimately approved by the committee was a toothless measure that won’t prevent party officials from supporting moderate candidates.
“Those people want to win elections and they know it’s about addition, not subtraction,” said Rove of the Republican National Committee vote.
The one race where there is at least a perceived threat from the tea party crowd toward the establishment is the Florida GOP Senate primary.
But despite how the race has been framed, Marco Rubio, who is running against Gov. Charlie Crist, is hardly a wild-eyed activist. Rubio is a former state House speaker and Jeb Bush protégé whose donors include such party establishment types as Rove and whose advisers include longtime national strategists such Todd Harris and Heath Thompson.
Further, Crist’s problems aren’t merely ideological. Yes, he’s paying a price for having supported the stimulus package. But he’s also hurt himself more deeply by seeming to nakedly play to the political mood of the moment, positioning himself to the center when that seems wise and shifting right when threatened by his own party.
As notable, if less commented upon, as the Florida match is the Pennsylvania Senate contest.
Former Rep. Pat Toomey, a past Club for Growth president who was once thought unelectable by his own party, has moderated himself slightly (he backed the confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor) and is hammering Sen. Arlen Specter on fiscal issues.
It’s still early, and Specter may lose his own primary, but Toomey is enjoying a 14-point lead, according to a new poll — seeming to prove that if they run disciplined campaigns that home in on issues that voters are concerned with, the conditions could be such that even candidates to the right of their state’s mainstream have a chance to win.
GOP Cash Provides 2012 Clues
The battle for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination quietly began last year — maybe not for the candidates, but for their political groups.
Sarah Palin’s committee paid more than $50,000 for policy advice in the second half of 2009, during which Tim Pawlenty’s and Mike Huckabee’s spent nearly $97,000 combined on fundraising lists. Newt Gingrich’s dropped $585,000 to jet him across the country. Mitt Romney’s doled out $17,500 to New Hampshire pols and causes.
The stated mission of the committees was to boost Republican candidates, rebuild the party and advance conservative policies. But an examination of recently filed finance reports covering the second half of 2009 shows that the groups also are serving to boost their leaders’ viability as White House hopefuls and build political operations that could launch their runs.
Palin’s political action committee paid $21,000 to Kim Daniels, a Maryland lawyer who is an expert on health care “rights of conscience,” for domestic policy advice, and an additional $30,000 to the lobbying and consulting firm of Randy Scheunemann for foreign policy advice. The two helped the former Alaska governor craft a paid speech in Hong Kong in September, which was interpreted as an effort to develop a more polished public policy profile.
In the final six months of last year, the PACs founded by Pawlenty and Huckabee — a governor and a former governor who have been criticized for their lack of national fundraising network — paid $52,000 and $45,000, respectively, to rent or buy fundraising lists.
Meanwhile, Gingrich’s committee spent hundreds of thousands on charter flights to get the former House speaker to speaking engagements across the country.
And the network of PACs led by Romney, the former Massachusetts governor whose presidential ambitions hinge largely on his ability to win New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary, in 2009 contributed $17,500 to candidates and committees in the Granite State.
Jason Torchinsky, a Republican campaign finance lawyer, said that almost anyone thinking seriously about running for president in 2012 should have already started some form of political nonprofit.
“Over the last 20 years, this has become the pattern for people thinking about running for president,” said Torchinsky. “It certainly makes things easier if they decide to become a candidate later this year or early next year, because they will have built a donor list and relationships with local officials and party activists, as well as consultants.”
Between July 1 and the beginning of this year, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Romney’s PAC (Free and Strong America) brought in more than $1.6 million, Palin’s (Sarah PAC) raised nearly $1.4 million, Huckabee’s (Huck PAC) raised $519,000 and Pawlenty’s (Freedom First) raked in nearly $1.3 million, though it’s only been up and running for three months.
But according to a report filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Gingrich’s group, American Solutions for Winning the Future, lapped them all, raising $6.4 million in the second half of the year.
As a so-called 527 organization, named for the section of the IRS code under which it’s established, American Solutions can accept unlimited donations from individuals and corporations, but is barred from contributing to candidates.
The others’ groups are leadership PACs, which are limited to accepting maximum donations of $5,000 per-person-per-year, and can contribute to candidates and committees. Yet the PACs in question contributed a combined total of only $124,000 from their federal accounts in the second half of 2009 — less than 3 percent of what they raised in that time and about the same amount that they spent on catering.
To be sure, the groups helped spur the GOP in ways other than direct contributions, but those contributions pale in comparison to their collective spending on fundraising ($4.6 million), consultants ($1.2 million) or even travel ($807,000).
All the prospective 2012-ers and their groups’ representatives insist their groups are focused on raising money to boost Republicans headed into the 2010 midterms.
“We’re obviously very pleased with the support we received last quarter, and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to elect a lot of conservative candidates this fall,” said Alex Conant, a former Republican National Committee spokesman now working for Pawlenty’s PAC. “Beyond that, who knows what will happen.”
Conant’s eponymous consulting firm was paid $10,000 by Pawlenty’s PAC in the last three months of 2009, making him one of a handful of savvy young Washington operatives retained by the PAC in its few short months of operation. Others include former Bush White House political director Sara Taylor, former Republican Governors Association director Phil Musser, Web gurus Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn and campaign finance lawyer Michael Toner.
Their firms were paid a combined $34,000 by the PAC, its FEC report shows.
Pawlenty’s PAC operation remains light, skewing toward consultants, and retaining only five full-time employees. Huckabee’s, on the other hand, paid a few consultants, but reported paying six employees’ salaries (and benefits), the largest of which went to his daughter.
The biggest operations were maintained by Gingrich’s group, which in the second half of 2009, paid $895,000 to 21 employees and an additional $539,000 to 13 consultants, and Romney’s, which paid $154,000 to eight employees and $390,000 to 11 consultants.
Palin did not pay a single full-time employee salary or benefit, relying instead on a small group of Alaska-based consultants and a few Washington hands.
Campaign finance and tax laws prohibit politicians from using their leadership PACs or 527s to directly fund their own campaigns. Otherwise, though, there are few restrictions on how leadership PACs and 527s can spend their cash, and Sarah PAC’s spending, in particular, occasionally blurred the line between her political and personal lives.
On June 5, for example, the PAC paid $260 for food and drink at Yankee Stadium when Palin and her husband, Todd, took in a ballgame with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his wife Judith.
The PAC also paid Harper Collins, publisher of Palin’s best-selling memoir “Going Rogue,” $68,000 for books to be sent to donors and to subsidize portions of her book tour, which occasionally felt more like a campaign swing, including travel costs for her personal photographer, who also was paid $14,200 directly by the PAC.
Sources: Politico, MSNBC
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