The Other McCain

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Primaries in 3 States: ‘If Stutzman Wins, DeMint Is Going to Look Like a Genius’

Posted on | May 4, 2010 | 13 Comments

There are primaries today in North Carolina, Ohio and Indiana, where Jim DeMint’s backing of conservative Republican Marlin Stutzman inspires this reflection from Jim Antle at The American Spectator:

DeMint has endorsed state Sen. Marlin Stutzman and has helped him raise over $220,000 in a matter of days. If Stutzman wins, DeMint is going to look like a genius — nobody in Washington and relatively few people in Indiana gave him any chance. Even DeMint seems uncertain, saying, “I’m not sure if I got in soon enough.”
But what if the conventional wisdom pans out and former Sen. Dan Coats wins, former Rep. John Hostettler finishes second, and Stutzman runs third? People are going to ask whether DeMint helped a conservative candidate of the future (Stutzman) at the expense of a conservative who could have won the primary today (Hostettler). If Hostettler wins or Stutzman finishes second, there will be less room to quibble.

At least since 1995, when Bob Dole was GOP Senate leader, Republican senators have been the most effective foes of conservatism in Washington. One reason for that is the NRSC’s disastrous habit of recruiting and/or defending unprincipled moderates in contested Republican primaries (e.g., Chafee, Specter, Crist). Even if Stutzman comes up short in Indiana, DeMint is clearly onto something in trying to find viable conservative alternatives to the supposely “safe” candidates preferred by NRSC.

This isn’t a call to “purge” moderates from the GOP, but rather to say that it is time for Republicans to stop being afraid of their own party’s conservative grassroots. Nearly six decades after Buckley published God and Man at Yale, and three decades after Ronald Reagan was elected president, conservatism is now a respectable mainstream political philosophy.

However, too many Republicans still have a defensive flinch reflex that causes them to back down from a fight and to treat the common-sense beliefs of GOP voters as embarrassing “extremists.” The real extremists are the left-wing wackos who are backing the unelectable Jennifer Brunner in Ohio’s Democratic primary because Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher is (allegedly) not liberal enough.

The nutroots backing Brunner and the Republicans who backed Charlie Crist are de facto collaborators in the same project: Driving American political discourse leftward. 

An effective political movement cannot be organized on the basis of appealing to “centrists.”  For starters, as Dan Schnur says, “There’s no such thing as a raging moderate.” What one finds among so-called “independent” voters is not firm principle but, rather, ignorance of and disengagement from the political process. The greater the voter’s knowledge and involvement, the more likely he is to be a firm partisan of one party or the other. “Independent” voters tend to be bandwagon-jumpers who like to vote for the winner, and their opinions are thus lagging indicators of political trends.

Democrats labor diligently to make liberal ideas acceptable to these alleged “moderates,” while too many Republicans respond to the mainstreaming of liberalism by saying, “Me, too! Open borders! Carbon taxes! More federal funding for public schools! Miranda rights for al-Qaeda!”

It does no good for conservatives to win the “war of ideas,” if they elect Republicans who are afraid to fight for those ideas. And the key to success in this regard is for grassroots conservatives to get directly involved in the political process, as Professor Glenn Reynolds points out:

In many states, Tea Partiers are taking over the local GOP apparatus, running for precinct chairman or other low-level offices, as they try to take over the party from the ground up. . . .
[R]allies without follow-through are just rallies. And the Tea Party movement is now following through with the grunt work of politics: Organizing precincts, waging primary battles, registering voters, and compiling mailing lists.

As the professor observes, that kind of “grunt work” — e.g., working a phone bank in Pennsylvania — isn’t glamorous or exciting, but it is the only alternative to leaving politics in the hands of insiders and elites.

Category: Election, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Republicans, Tea Party

Comments

13 Responses to “Primaries in 3 States: ‘If Stutzman Wins, DeMint Is Going to Look Like a Genius’”

  1. Largebill
    May 4th, 2010 @ 3:51 pm

    Right you are, sir! It can be reasonably argued that the losses of 2006 and 2008 can be largely attributable to a sense that the senators with an (R) next to their name were no more conservative than the ones with a (D). Politicians without core beliefs and principles are not very inspiring.

  2. Largebill
    May 4th, 2010 @ 10:51 am

    Right you are, sir! It can be reasonably argued that the losses of 2006 and 2008 can be largely attributable to a sense that the senators with an (R) next to their name were no more conservative than the ones with a (D). Politicians without core beliefs and principles are not very inspiring.

  3. Brian Paasch
    May 4th, 2010 @ 4:34 pm

    The problem with the Senate race in Indiana is that the grassroots conservative vote is being split by Stutzman and Hostettler. Coats will likely win because of that, unfortunately. If the NRSC had stayed out, we’d have had a robust primary contest between two conservatives.

  4. Brian Paasch
    May 4th, 2010 @ 11:34 am

    The problem with the Senate race in Indiana is that the grassroots conservative vote is being split by Stutzman and Hostettler. Coats will likely win because of that, unfortunately. If the NRSC had stayed out, we’d have had a robust primary contest between two conservatives.

  5. Rick
    May 4th, 2010 @ 5:22 pm

    I was very disappointed that DeMint got involved in this primary. Hostettler was the stronger candidate, but instead of supporting him, DeMint (and some others on the national scene) sought to inflate a weaker, lesser known candidate. Although I’m still hoping John Hostettler can pull off a win, DeMint has almost certaintly given the nomination to Dan (Harriet Miers/lobbyist/DC insider) Coats. I’ll not be sending DeMint’s PAC my money any longer.

  6. Rick
    May 4th, 2010 @ 12:22 pm

    I was very disappointed that DeMint got involved in this primary. Hostettler was the stronger candidate, but instead of supporting him, DeMint (and some others on the national scene) sought to inflate a weaker, lesser known candidate. Although I’m still hoping John Hostettler can pull off a win, DeMint has almost certaintly given the nomination to Dan (Harriet Miers/lobbyist/DC insider) Coats. I’ll not be sending DeMint’s PAC my money any longer.

  7. chuck cross
    May 4th, 2010 @ 5:24 pm

    I still want to know who released the smear email this weekend from the Stutzman campaign kneecapping John Hostettler.

  8. chuck cross
    May 4th, 2010 @ 12:24 pm

    I still want to know who released the smear email this weekend from the Stutzman campaign kneecapping John Hostettler.

  9. chuck cross
    May 4th, 2010 @ 10:51 pm

    It’s early, but it looks like all the talking-heads who started pushing Stutzman and helped funnel all that cash ended up splitting the conservative vote, and allowing the Moderate to win. Was this planned?

    http://www.politico.com/2010/maps/

  10. chuck cross
    May 4th, 2010 @ 5:51 pm

    It’s early, but it looks like all the talking-heads who started pushing Stutzman and helped funnel all that cash ended up splitting the conservative vote, and allowing the Moderate to win. Was this planned?

    http://www.politico.com/2010/maps/

  11. Two things I didn’t get around to this morning - « A Conservative Shemale
    May 4th, 2010 @ 7:07 pm

    […] get around to this morning – May 4, 2010 by jenn1964 The Other McCain believes that if Marlin Stutzman wins the GOP Senate primary in Indiana Jim DeMint will end up looking like a genius. I’m sorry but that’s wrong, if Stutzman wins the Senate seat then DeMint can crow […]

  12. AngelaTC
    May 5th, 2010 @ 2:58 pm

    When Stutzman entered the race, I figured he was just a way to draw votes away from Hostettler. Oh well, that’s politics.

  13. AngelaTC
    May 5th, 2010 @ 9:58 am

    When Stutzman entered the race, I figured he was just a way to draw votes away from Hostettler. Oh well, that’s politics.