"The Empire Strikes Back!" by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo

The Empire Strikes Back!

by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/02/the_empire_strikes_back_1.php

"SNIP............................................

By rights Republicans should have won the Senate in 2010 but didn’t. They probably should have again in 2012 but lost seats. Some degree of the 2012 success was due to the fact that President Obama’s coalition and campaign were more potent and better organized than expected. But the overriding reason was that Republican primary electorates kept nominating candidates who ripped it in the conservative rage bubble but barely survived first contact that with a bipartisan, non-gerrymandered electorate, even in relative conservative states like Missouri and Indiana.

And now with another really good shot at taking the Senate in 2014 (when the banner 2008 class of Dems comes up for reelection), the Republican establishment has decided to step in and take an active role in knee-capping far right and/or wildly indisciplined candidates who they think can’t win or have too big a risk of imploding. In case you missed it there was this New York Times piece over the weekend about something called the Conservative Victory Project, an offshoot of American Crossroads, the Rove affiliated group that was such a big spender last year. The head guy is Steven J. Law, president of AC.

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If there’s something ridiculous to say about rape, Muslims, Obamacare, slavery reparations, Obama’s black relatives or many other edifying topics, he’s said it. Probably ten times. (He’s probably about 1/10 of the TPM publishing model.) Meanwhile, Iowa’s a state that has really conservative conservatives and really liberal liberals. So it’s the kind of state where Republicans run a particularly big risk of sending a real wingnut into the buzzsaw of a general election.

What’s interesting about this development to me is that the establishment counter-attack is so unabashedly establishment in nature. Before American Crossroads, Law was the Chief Counsel for the US Chamber of Commerce. So extremely establishment money Republicans, the folks who are animated by low upper income taxes and minimal regulation of the private economy don’t really care or generally want to talk about birth control or rape or Muslims or a lot of the other things that really animate the base of the Republican party. And the message is open and direct: we’re going to stop you from nominating these crazy people.

..........................................SNIP"