Has The ‘Tea Party Primary’ Finally Jumped The Shark?

2014 Could Be A Bad Year For Tea Party Senate Candidates

DANIEL STRAUSS – JANUARY 24, 2014, 6:00 AM EST

One of the craziest potential match-ups in the Republican Senate primaries this year promised to be Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) -- but early momentum for Stockman quickly fizzled.

Stockman, whose tea party bona fides include threatening to impeach President Barack Obama over new gun control restrictions and comparing Obamacare to sexually transmitted diseases, doesn't seem to be making much of a dent in the poll numbers after his last-minute entry into the Senate primary. Stockman couldn't even emerge victorious in a local Texas tea party straw poll and has even recently been missing from congressional votes. And though it's still early in the 2014 cycle, Stockman's lackluster campaign might be indicative of how insurgent tea partiers challengers are faring against establishment Republicans. So far, it's looking increasingly like the so-called tea party wave, which peaked in 2010, might be headed toward a valley this time around.

The conservative movement has been able to stake its influence in terms of pushing top Republicans to move to the right, but they haven't always been able to translate that into electoral success. There are even a few House races where incumbent tea partiers face primary challenges from more mainstream Republicans. In the Senate, it's hard to see the most prominent tea party candidates even getting the Republican nomination, as conservative darlings like Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller did in the past.

"Right now, it's not clear to me that we're going to have any of the Senate races where a high-profile incumbent gets bumped off by an insurgent radical tea party type," congressional scholar Norm Ornstein from the conservative American Enterprise Institute told TPM.

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