The Tea Party, Revisited

Today, the 2014 primary season begins in earnest.  As with 2010 and 2012, there are a fair number of "Tea Party" challenges to Republican incumbents and establishment primary favorites. Today we see if establishment favorite Thom Tillis can clear the 40 percent benchmark in North Carolina and avoid a Senate runoff. Next Tuesday insurgent Senate candidate Ben Sasse (pictured, at right) will try to clinch the nomination in Nebraska. Primaries the following week in Kentucky and Georgia will test establishment moxie, while June will see key races in Iowa, Mississippi, and South Carolina.   Analysts are already preparing to declare the Tea Party dead or, in the alternative, to write the inevitable “Republicans pull defeat from the jaws of victory” storyline.

This is a tough column for me to write, because I agree with the general principle that Tea Party challenges have cost the Republican Party winnable races. I also agree that, over the long haul, there is an advantage for a party that nominates experienced candidates, who are less likely to see their candidacies implode over unforced errors.  So to be completely up front and clear: This shouldn’t be read as a generalized apologia for the Tea Party.

This is instead offered as a corrective to a narrative that has seemingly gotten out of control, and lost all sense of nuance.  When evaluating Tea Party challenges, I think there are four facts that have been lost in the conventional wisdom.

1. This Isn’t as New as Many People Seem to Think

The Republican Party establishment and its more conservative base have been at varying degrees of conflict for over a half century.  For a classic example of this, consider the 1952 Republican convention. As I wrote last summer:

When Republicans did win, in 1952, there was no makeover. Conservatives had argued for one, and backed Ohio Sen. Bob Taft for president, using terms that in many ways foreshadowed today’s anti-establishment Tea Party rhetoric. Everett Dirksen, shouting from the podium and wagging his finger at Tom Dewey (in the audience) argued for the seating of delegates critical to Taft’s campaign: “I stood with you in 1940. I stood with you in 1944. I stood with you in 1948, when you gave us a candidate [drowned out by crowd] . . . . To my friends from New York, when my friend Tom Dewey was the candidate in ’44 and ’48, I tried to be one of his best campaigners. . . . Re-examine your hearts [on this delegate issue] because we followed you before, and you took us down the road to defeat! Don’t do this to us!” (See it here starting at the 16:30 mark; note the fistfight that breaks out at the end of the speech, around the 20-minute mark).

You can look at Charles Sandman’s defeat of New Jersey Gov. William Cahill in 1973, or Jeffrey Bell’s defeat of New Jersey Sen. Clifford Case, or the 1996 trifecta of Wayne Allard, Al Salvi and Sam Brownback upsetting Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton, Illinois Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra, and Kansas Sen. Sheila Frahm (this prompted a front page story in Roll Call about whether Republicans had tacked too far to the right), and see prototypes of Tea Party/establishment fights.  Even 2008 saw Rep. Steve Pearce defeat the more moderate Rep. Heather Wilson in the New Mexico Senate primary.

I don’t mean to understate the magnitude of the most recent spate of establishment defeats.  But we should just remember that this tension has been around for a long time. We just have a catchy name for it now.

2. The Tea Party Has Had Its Fair Share of Successes

Lost in much of the shouting about the Tea Party is the fact that it really has had significant successes. It’s also true, as we’ll see below, that it has cost Republicans at least some Senate seats.

But from a conservative perspective, Utah Sen. Mike Lee is a much better Senate pick than Bob Bennett was and Ted Cruz is superior to David Dewhurst. More importantly, Marco Rubio is far superior to Charlie Crist (who validated many Republican fears about him by switching parties), and Pat Toomey is far superior to Arlen Specter (who validated many Republican fears about him also by switching parties).  Without the Tea Party, Republicans would have Sen. Mike Castle instead of Sen. Chris Coons, but they would also have Sen. Russ Feingold instead of Sen. Ron Johnson.  In fact, I’m reasonably certain that without the Tea Party, Republicans wouldn’t have picked up 63 House seats.

In short, I’m not sure that there’s any way to get rid of the bad here without getting rid of the good for Republicans. I just think you have to account for both, even if you think (as I do) that it doesn’t work out to a wash.  It’s just closer to a wash than popular narratives surrounding the Tea Party would like to admit.

3. Establishment Failures

Let’s also remember that the 2012 elections weren’t just a Tea Party failure. The GOP establishment got its preferred candidates in Senate races in Montana, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin. They all lost.

Now, it is absolutely true that candidates in these states had a tougher climb than the “anti-establishment” candidates who lost in Missouri and Indiana. With the exception of Montana, Barack Obama was winning in these states, rather than losing handily as he did in Indiana and Missouri.

But the point is that we have to be very careful in assuming counterfactual results.  If Clint Didier had upset Dino Rossi in the 2010 Senate primary in Washington, we’d probably chalk that up as a “Tea Party defeat,” even though Rossi eventually lost.  If Mark Neumann had defeated Tommy Thompson in the Republican Senate primary in Wisconsin in 2012, it might be compared to Christine O’Donnell’s upset of Castle. Of course, we know that Thompson would go on to lose by six points.

To reiterate, I believe that Thompson and Rossi probably performed better than Didier or Neumann would have performed (though Neumann had come reasonably close to winning a Senate election in the bad GOP year of 1998). It’s just a reminder that we don’t know the counterfactual here, and our assumptions can often be incorrect.

4. Popular Perceptions of Tea Party Losses Are Too Harsh on Tea Party Candidates.

There are five major Tea Party losses in Senate races that are often cited by prognosticators: O’Donnell in Delaware, Ken Buck in Colorado, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Todd Akin in Missouri, and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. The only one of these that I would call a clear “what were they thinking?” move is Delaware Republicans’ choice of O’Donnell over former Governor and Rep. Mike Castle.

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