By DEXTER DUGGAN
Probably not since the surprising Tea Party sprang onto the scene in 2009 has there been such an unexpected arrival of political potency, a man who in fact may suit Tea Partiers to a T — as in Trump.
And both the exasperated citizen-rebels who had had it with swollen government and today’s headstrong Donald Trump were greeted the same way by many of the prevailing powers. Not welcomed with eagerness that more voters were becoming involved in democracy, but with disgust that someone dared act outside mandated expectations.
The Democratic Party and the dominant media pretty soon sized up the Tea Partiers as a danger — which the citizen-rebels proceeded to verify by overwhelmingly returning the U.S. House to a Republican, mainly conservative, majority in the 2010 elections.
Trump has yet to prove himself in a national election, although he roused up energized voters during the GOP primary process. He, like Tea Partiers, saw a void and filled it.
However, another established group that worried over the advent of both Tea Party rebels and Trump was a strong element of national Republican leadership, who didn’t like new troops not being under their control.
Defeating many Democrats and bypassing media gatekeepers didn’t provide sufficient demonstration of being worthy new warriors on the scene. The warriors had to learn to be hesitant and obedient to Republican powerbrokers who, unfortunately, weren’t too comfortable with success.
Maybe it would have been better if Tea Partiers had maintained more of a distance from these political shrinking violets.
“Moderate” Sen. John McCain preferred doing things the stodgy way, too, and condemning “wacko birds.” That left him unpopular with many conservative voters, who consider principle more important than “mainstream” praise.
Don’t forget, the new, independent Tea Party movement hadn’t rushed right over to sign up with the Republicans. Its members had a real debate whether they should go the third-party route, before generally concluding that Republicans’ small-government inclinations were a suitable home for their aspirations.
Having made common cause with the GOP, it wasn’t so long before Tea Partiers began to feel they weren’t equal partners but still unwelcome second cousins. Fighting for more conservative triumphs wasn’t simply a matter of defeating left-wing Democrats and their media allies, but some key Republican adversaries, too.
A September 2 post at the Conservative Review website noted that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) was being praised by liberal publications for quashing the Tea Party in recent elections.
“What’s notable is that the Senate majority leader views success as killing the grass-roots — which is exactly the attitude that fueled the fury and fracture within the GOP that ultimately installed Donald Trump as its presidential nominee,” said the Conservative Review article by political pro Amanda Carpenter.
Apparently no fan of Trump, Carpenter concluded:
“In short, if McConnell wants credit for crushing the Tea Party, he should get credit for the way Trump is crushing the GOP, as well. One is directly related to the other. McConnell’s reign in Washington has been defined by three things: no leadership, no unity, and no results. Those three things that created the perfect storm for Trump to rise.”
National conservative radio talk host Mark Levin noted on September 1 that McConnell wouldn’t have a GOP majority in the Senate that he can be leader of without electoral success by conservatives — whom he then turns around and tries to subjugate.
Who can forget McConnell and then-House Speaker John Boehner pleading for voters to give the GOP control of the U.S. Senate, too, in the 2014 elections, so Republicans could really get things done with a majority in both chambers?
The GOP won that majority, then proceeded to shove through radical Democrat Barack Obama’s agenda whenever it could, from keeping the borders wide open to funding both Obamacare and baby-butcher Planned Parenthood to installing lawless pro-abortion extremist Loretta Lynch as attorney general to enabling Obama’s disastrous Iran nuclear delusion.
If conservative voters dared ask whatever happened to that promised GOP puissance, they were told tremulously: But Alinskyite Obama insists we do it his way or he’ll stamp his feet!
Once conservative congressional reinforcements arrived in Washington after the elections, they were expected just to be meek under leadership and follow its faltering royal orders — the same formula for defeat that already had angered voters. Either obey your kings, pols were told, or maybe get challenged in the next primary election back home by some dealmaker more to leadership’s liking.
Cong. Louie Gohmert (R., Texas) told Sean Hannity’s national radio audience on September 2 that McConnell and Boehner had tried to remove him but failed, although a leadership effort succeeded in defeating Tea Party Cong. Tim Huelskamp (R., Kans.) in his August primary election.
Gohmert noted that another Tea Party Republican, Cong. Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.), survived a challenge from those opposing his allegiance with conservatives.
The day after Arizona’s August 30 primary, the Associated Press reported that Gosar’s primary-election GOP opponent “benefited from more than $280,000 in spending by the group that seeks to unseat ‘Freedom Caucus’ members who ousted House Speaker John Boehner.”
In the August 30 Florida primary election, a woman supported by the Senate Conservatives Action group for a U.S. House seat was defeated narrowly by a more liberal Republican congenial to D.C. GOP leaders.
Shortly before that Sunshine State election, the conservative group said in an email: “House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) along with two super PACs with ties to the House GOP leadership (Right Way and ESAFund) are trying to defeat Mary Thomas because they know she will stand up to them.
“The GOP establishment loves to talk about how the Republicans need more women and minorities in office to improve the party’s image. But when a young, conservative 38-year-old Indian-American woman seeks office, they move heaven and earth to defeat her,” wrote Ken Cuccinelli, president of the conservative group.
He added: “It’s not unlike what…McConnell…is doing to Darryl Glenn (R., Colo.) in the Colorado Senate race. Glenn is an African-American retired Air Force officer who is now the Republican nominee, but McConnell won’t support him because he’s conservative and can’t be controlled.”
The Real Battle
However, conservative Republican campaign consultant Constantin Querard of Arizona told The Wanderer that it’s better to avoid casting every election issue as simply the establishment versus conservatives.
“The GOP establishment hold views to the left of conservatives, but their ultimate goal is maintaining a majority, because it does them no good to be ‘in charge’ of a minority,” Querard said. “So they will support whoever it takes to win. If they can win with either a conservative or a liberal, they will prefer the liberal, but what the establishment wants most is to win.
“What this means for the conservative movement is that we need to focus on defeating liberals, because there will be plenty of occasions when what we call ‘the establishment’ will actually be an ally in a particular battle,” Querard added.
“If the establishment is sometimes with us and sometimes against us, it makes no sense to oppose them 100 percent of the time. The real battle is with the left in both parties.”
Political races usually feature “a confluence of interests, often temporary, that produces alliances for or against certain candidates,” he said.
One might think of Arizonan Gosar’s race as an example. The conservative Club for Growth spent heavily against him a few years ago, but supports Gosar this year.
After Gosar won this year’s primary, the organization issued a frank congratulatory statement on August 31 saying: “In 2012, the club’s PAC endorsed Gosar’s challenger, after Gosar tallied a 63 percent on the club’s 2011 scorecard. Gosar won that election, but since then he has amassed a strong pro-growth record, earning a 90 percent average score since 2012.”
Meanwhile, some constituents had complaints against the congressman concerning agriculture or a proposed highway through the Fourth District, but when the Boehner-linked group against the Freedom Caucus jumped in against Gosar this year, that focused attention on “establishment” meddling.
Sometimes The Wanderer has heard in Arizona conservative circles that some conservatives oppose John McCain so much that they would rather vote for a Democrat in the general election, if that’s what it takes to remove McCain from office.
McCain won a narrow outright majority of 51.7 percent of the August 30 primary vote, while his major GOP foe, Kelli Ward, a physician and former state senator, took 39.2 percent. Two minor candidates totaled 9.1 percent.
The Wanderer asked Querard if he thought some Grand Canyon State conservatives would vote for liberal Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick for the Senate seat this November, even though that might have the effect of helping national Democrats win back a majority of the U.S. Senate from GOP control. Querard replied:
“Do they vote for Kirkpatrick? I doubt it, but I could easily see them skipping the race altogether. More so than most, McCain has gone to great lengths to attack conservatives, so they could be easily forgiven if they rightfully concluded that he didn’t want their help or their votes.”
McCain has gone so far as to promote efforts to remove local GOP precinct committeemen from office who don’t favor him.
Robert Robb, a generally conservative opinion columnist at the generally liberal, Phoenix-based Arizona Republic, noted that McCain hadn’t done so well in the primary election that he would be free to pivot easily for more moderates’ votes now.
Robb posted on September 2 that McCain’s margin of victory came from the state’s two most urban counties, Maricopa (Phoenix) and Pima (Tucson), “so McCain probably doesn’t have the luxury of focusing exclusively on swing voters in the middle. The primary result indicated that he still has some repair work to do with populist conservatives, particularly in the rural areas.”
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