Sen. John Cornyn’s Facebook friends aren’t in a very friendly
mood. The Texas Republican’s page on the popular social networking
website has been filled with comments like this one from a Florida
real estate broker: “As soon as I read of your endorsement of
Charlie Crist, I sent in a donation to the Marco Rubio
campaign.”
A new Facebook group has since cropped up challenging members to
give “not one penny” to the National Republican Senatorial
Committee (NRSC), of which Cornyn is chairman. The online group’s
description says: “First they supported Chafee. Then they supported
Specter. Now they support Crist.” Its organizer and “admin” is
Erick Erickson of the popular conservative blog RedState.
This isn’t just a story of how cutting-edge technologies can cut
both ways. Cornyn has found himself caught up in the struggle
between conservatives and moderates over the Republican Party’s
future. Several primaries in upcoming races will feature
party-backed moderate candidates facing off against strong
conservative challengers. The showdown brewing between Florida Gov.
Charlie Crist and former state House Speaker Marco Rubio for
Republican Mel Martinez’s U.S. Senate seat is just the latest front
in this ongoing battle.
Cornyn’s decision to weigh in on behalf of Crist can be
explained by a headline that appeared in the Hill in
February: “Florida Senate poll shows Crist annihilating field.” The
numbers haven’t changed much since then. A Mason-Dixon poll taken
in May shows Crist leading Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek 55 percent
to 24 percent and Democratic state Sen. Dan Gelber 57 percent to 22
percent. Rep. Ron Klein, a Democrat who has twice won in a
Republican-leaning district, is considered somewhat less likely to
run. Crist last led him by 34 points. Rubio doesn’t fare much
better than the Democrats. Mason-Dixon shows Crist clobbering him
53 percent to 18 percent, with 29 percent undecided.
But head-to-head matchups show Rubio would be competitive if he
managed to make it to the general election. “Rubio could win but
he’d need our help,” says a Senate Republican staffer. “Crist would
be the overwhelming favorite and we wouldn’t have to lift a
finger.” The idea is to keep the Florida Senate seat safe while
Republicans—already a beleaguered minority—have to defend more
ground than the Democrats.
Except that the GOP also needs to repair its image and offer a
bold contrast. Many conservatives believe that a Senator Rubio
would do that more effectively than a Senator Crist. “Rubio is
everything older Republicans like Crist should be encouraging,”
argued Dan McLaughlin on RedState. “He’s young but already
experienced as a leader, he’s telegenic and a good speaker, he’s
conservative, and yes, he’s Latino, a demographic that a more
inclusive Republican party would be reaching out to, not
spurning.”
The conservative Hispanic Leadership Fund had a similar
reaction. “We are highly disappointed that the Republican
establishment would slam the door on Marco Rubio, who is the kind
of candidate that the GOP should be eagerly supporting,” read a
statement from the group. “We have heard a lot of talk about how
the party wants to find qualified Hispanic candidates to run for
office but in the end we see once again that this is nothing but
lip-service.”
Conservatives have gotten angry with the NRSC before. Despite
the recent focus on the Club for Growth, the NRSC has intervened in
competitive Republican primaries and helped rescue
moderate-to-liberal incumbents from conservative challengers. The
NRSC—along with then Sen. Rick Santorum and then President George
W. Bush—came to the aid of Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania five
years ago, helping him narrowly beat back a strong primary
challenge from Pat Toomey. When it looked like they would be unable
to defeat Toomey a second time, Specter switched parties and put
the Democrats on a path to a 60-seat, filibuster-proof
supermajority.
The NRSC also helped bail out Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode
Island, the most liberal Republican senator, when Cranston mayor
Steve Laffey challenged him from the right in 2006. Chafee was not
just pro-choice. He routinely voted against Republican positions
almost across the board, with National Journal ranking him
to the left not only of Specter but also of Democrats Mary Landrieu
of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. In 2005, Chafee scored 12
out of 100 in the American Conservative Union’s rankings—the same
as Hillary Clinton and a point worse than Russ Feingold.
Given this voting record, if Chafee had held on to his Senate
seat—giving the GOP 50 senators in 2007–08 plus Vice President Dick
Cheney’s tie-breaking vote—Republicans would not have had effective
control of the chamber. They would have had to bargain with a
liberal Northeastern senator to pass anything. And given what ended
up happening with Specter this year and Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords
in 2001, Republicans might not have been able to maintain nominal
control, either. Chafee ended up leaving the party after the 2006
election, even though he won both his primary and 94 percent of
Republican votes in November.
But at least Chafee was an incumbent with some chance of
winning, while Laffey was a near-certain loser. (The more
conservative Republican Gov. Donald Carcieri was able to win
reelection in Rhode Island that year, but he wasn’t asking to be
sent to Washington to vote with George W. Bush.) In 2004, Toomey
was a weaker general-election candidate than Specter but no sure
pushover: he’d thrice been elected to the House in a swing district
that voted for Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
Specter-Toomey is a good model for some of the primary fights
Republicans will be facing this year: either the moderate or the
conservative could win, but the moderate has stronger poll numbers
right now. The first such race was decided in June. New Jersey
Republicans faced a choice between moderate former U.S. attorney
Chris Christie and conservative former Bogota mayor Steve
Lonegan.
The incumbent Democrat, Gov. Jon Corzine, is very vulnerable and
could conceivably be beaten by any credible Republican challenger.
A May Quinnipiac poll showed Christie leading Corzine 45 percent to
38 percent while Lonegan bested the sitting governor 42 percent to
40 percent (within the margin of error, though Lonegan has led
Christie by as many as eight points). A story in
Philadelphia’s The Bulletin described the Republicans’
dilemma well. One side has “seen the governor’s weakness as an
opportunity to elect a strong economic conservative” in an
“eminently populist and union-heavy state.” But “the prospect of
beating an incumbent Democrat draws many Republicans to the
reputedly more electable Mr. Christie.”
Connecticut Republicans still have this question ahead of them.
A Quinnipiac poll showed former Rep. Rob Simmons mopping the floor
with Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd by 50 percent to 34 percent. But
Simmons is a quintessential moderate Republican, with a 55 lifetime
rating from the American Conservative Union. The same poll showed
more conservative state Sen. Sam Caligiuri edging Dodd 41 percent
to 37 percent. Should the GOP take what might be a
once-in-a-lifetime chance to possibly elect a more reliable
conservative in a typically Demo cratic state, even though it means
a tougher race? Or should they nominate the candidate with the best
current numbers, going for what could be an easy win? (If Dodd
remains this weak, Connecticut Democrats may decide to take matters
in their own hands during their primary.)
Then there is Pennsylvania again. The political climate so far
looks tougher for Toomey than in 2004 and the Republican
establishment, without any seats to spare this time, seems no more
eager to have him as the nominee. But Specter has already cleared
the primary field and flipped the Senate seat Democratic. Former
Gov. Tom Ridge, another moderate Republican, has decided to take a
pass on the race. Maybe Rep. Jim Gerlach will eventually decide to
challenge Toomey from the left. Right now, the GOP’s only other
option is Peg Luksik, a paleoconservative who is to Toomey’s
right.
Overall, Republicans have to be happy that their candidate
recruitment is going so well absent unmistakable signs that 2010 is
going to be the GOP’s year. Whatever outside groups like the NRSC
and the Club for Growth do, the ultimate decision-making power
belongs to Republican primary voters. But the competition between
moderates and conservatives within the party isn’t going away. If
anything, it is intensifying.
