Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
John Hanna / AP
In this Wednesday, March 30, 2011, file photo, Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Tim Owens, an Overland Park Republican, discusses drunken-driving legislation during a caucus of fellow GOP senators at the Statehouse in Topeka. Frustrated by their inability to achieve some policy goals, conservatives in Republican states are turning against moderate members of their own party, trying to drive them out of state legislatures to clear the way for reshaping government across a wide swath of mid-America controlled by the GOP.
Monday, July 30, 2012 | 1:42 p.m.
Sun coverage
TOPEKA, Kan. — Frustrated by their inability to achieve some policy goals, conservatives in Republican states are turning against moderate members of their own party, trying to drive them out of state legislatures to clear the way for reshaping government across a wide swath of mid-America controlled by the GOP.
Political groups are helping finance the efforts by supporting primary election challenges targeting several dozen moderate Republicans in the Midwest and South, especially prominent lawmakers who run key state committees.
Two years after Republicans swept into power in many state capitols, the challengers say it's time to adopt more conservative policies.
"If you don't believe in that playbook, then why are you on the team?" declared Greg Smith, who is trying to oust a moderate incumbent from the Kansas state Senate.
The push is most intense in Kansas, where conservatives are attempting to replace a dozen moderate Republican senators who bucked new Gov. Sam Brownback's move to slash state income taxes.
The Club for Growth, a major conservative interest group, is spending about $500,000 in Missouri this year. That's double the amount it invested two years ago. The anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity opened new chapters in Iowa, Minnesota and New Mexico. The conservative business group Texans for Lawsuit Reform spent $3.5 million on legislative candidates in the first half of 2012, more than double its total during the same period two years ago.
The primary strife reflects differences that were somewhat concealed in the party's triumphant victories in 2010, when, aided by public discontent about the economy, the GOP won its broadest control of state government since the Great Depression. After the vote, Republicans held governorships in 29 states and control of most of the legislatures from Michigan to Texas.
Conservatives, some aligned with the tea party movement, hoped to begin realizing their vision of smaller government and of a reformed education system that would give parents more alternatives to traditional public schools. But some of their initiatives were scaled back by GOP colleagues to soften the impact on public schools and other public services.
Oklahoma Republican Gov. Mary Fallin's plan to begin phasing out the state income tax was blocked entirely, and Brownback and Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman had to settle for a fraction of the tax cuts they wanted.
Conservative leaders say they are determined to seize a historic opportunity. Primary elections and runoffs are continuing in key states through August. The results so far have been mixed, with the overall effect this year likely to be incremental.
"It's no secret that there's kind of a battle for what the Republican Party will be into the future and, as a consequence, what this state will look like into the future," said Mark Desetti, a lobbyist for the largest teachers' union in Kansas.
The conservative push is being felt in states that are already solidly conservative, like Texas and Idaho, along with others, like Missouri, with a tradition of political moderation and divided power.
"Republican legislatures continue to move more and more to the right of center," said Alan Cobb, who's overseeing state-level operations for Americans for Prosperity. "You do have this tension everywhere."
The conflict in Kansas is heading toward a showdown in the Aug. 7 primary. Conservatives want to oust Senate President Steve Morris, Senate Majority Leader Jay Emler and the leaders of most of the important committees in the state Senate, which acted as a check on Brownback's move to make Kansas a laboratory of conservative fiscal and social policy.
"It is all about taking over the state in a conservative vein and eliminating as much as possible anybody who didn't agree with their philosophical ideas," said moderate GOP incumbent Sen. Tim Owens, one of the targets.
His opponent, conservative freshman state Rep. Jim Denning, said Owens has "lost his edge to lead, to negotiate, to stick to just Republican principles."
The governor is taking the unusual step of formally endorsing some challengers because the moderates, in resisting his proposals, "promote a Democrat agenda," he said.
The Kansas Chamber of Commerce raised $163,000 for the effort last year — a significant sum in a less populous state like Kansas — with more than $36,000 coming from Koch Industries Inc., the company led by Charles Koch, a prominent political donor.
So far this year, conservative challengers in Texas have unseated three state House committee chairmen who were accused by tea party adherents of cooperating with Democrats on legislation. A conservative opponent knocked off a moderate state senator in the Colorado primary.
In a key race in Missouri, David Pearce, the chairman of the Senate's Education Committee, faces a Republican primary challenge next month from a conservative opponent who has received $50,000 from a major anti-tax group.
In Kansas, conservatives hope to win enough races to spur the legislature to restrict how labor unions raise campaign money, to remake the state's appellate courts and to enact more conservative social policy. They've been disappointed that the state hasn't moved new public employees into a 401(k)-style pension plan, and there's been no serious consideration of school choice initiatives.
Associated Press writers Chris Blank in Jefferson City, Mo.; John Miller in Boise, Idaho; Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, and Kristen Wyatt in Denver contributed to this report.
If the middle class continues to dwindle, this is a useless plan.
Conservatives are going to have to realize that when a man who has had company supplied health insurance for his family and the company suddenly ends it, he's going to look for an advocate to help him. He's not going to say "when the going gets tough the tough get going". He has no option. He's going to have to come up with an extra $12,000. It's not going to happen no matter how tough he is. He'll look for an advocate. He'll look for Obama. You may not like his attitude but as the divide between rich and poor increases...voters will vote Democrat. The American spirit is strong, but the back has been broken for many. Health insurance, 401ks cut, wages cut. It's not going in the right direction.
@TomD1228: Don't you think that company supplied health insurance will be discontinued by some because of the current agenda that our President has. I think so, which is what many business owners tell me. So if this is true why would anyone want to look to President Obama for help. Seems the passing of the ACA tax is what has hurt company supplied health care.
I agree with dumping the moderate republicans.
To paraphrase a Ronald Reagan quote "I didn't leave the republican party, the republican party left me.
The Tea Party has no plan to balance the budget. Try to find anyone in the Tea Party that has an actual plan to balance the budget. All talk no action. They like to pretend like they're fiscal conservatives, but actually they're just borrow and spenders.
TeaTime is over, kids...
Americans will not support your hateful, divisive, 'holier-than-thou', women-hating, back-to-the-stone-age agenda in any large measure...
but go ahead, kick the 'moderates' out of your little clique...
They're the only RATIONAL ONES in your bunch!
The Tea Party idea of smaller government is where Big Brother decides what a pregnant woman can do with her body, and which consenting adults can get married to each other. The Tea Party supports the Patriot Act, which gives the government more power to spy on the American people, and NDAA which gives the government the power to arrest and detain Americans citzens indefinitely without a trial. They like the war without end in Eurasia, and the War on Drugs in America.
Ronald Reagan was a Moderate (like me). The candidate closest to him (Jon Huntsman) in policy issues and political style did not make it through the primaries. And, Reagan would not have made it now. To me, that's a sad commentary on the status of the Republican party. This rush to the Right has killed the concept of a Big Tent that Reagan and others like him wanted. If the GOP stays on this path, it will become so exclusive (literally) it will not have enough appeal to Moderates and Independents to win at the national level.
The Grand Old Party has managed in a short period of time to allow its ranks to be infiltrated by uneducated hotheads and xenophobic puppets of a plutocratic elite that plans on subverting the very nature of Democracy. Boehner and McConnell have become nothing more than irrelevant mouthpieces of an idiotic constituency that will within three years have destroyed the Republican party as it was. In its place will be a radical right wing that will be so concerned with gay marriage and abortion that they'll let the affairs of state fall by the wayside as corporations quietly rewrite the entire American legal system in their favor.
Priceless, how stupidity can undo two hundred years of political foundation in less than a decade.
Make Governor Christie President of your new nation of obsese nincompoops who think that a sarcastic comeback is more important that actual matters of state. As Fat Man in Chief with a foul mouth and crass demeanor he'd be the perfect representation of a nation that has lost its collective mind.
No need to ever fear Muslim terrorists again. We've got thousands of homegrown nuts on every corner now and when the Tea Party gets its way they'll all be armed to the hilt and no one will be safe to even go to the grocery store anymore without wearing a bulletproof vest.
Nice vision for a nation. It's pathetic when people like George H.W. Bush aren't even "conservative" enough anymore for this nation of wackos that thinks "Jersey Shore" is entertainment and can name the Real Housewives of New Jersey but not the members of the Supereme Court.
This new right wing is tearing down our country faster than anyone could have imagined. Sad. Truly sad. They'll passionately defend anyone's right to own a weapon of mass destruction but think that keeping other Americans healthy and alive and providing healthcare to all is evil.
Look at the comments you see on this site daily. The unbelievable hatred, resentment, and blind, bald-faced stupidity is so startling that you'd think it was fiction. No wonder Americans have fallen in love with the idea of Zombie Apocalypses and a dystopian vision of the future. The right wing wants to create a nation of citizens who fear everyone and everything. Community will no longer mean anything and everyone will hide inside their house with their guns loaded and ready to go when their neighbor rings the bell to borrow a cup of sugar.
Ironic. And they blame Obama and Democrats for the crappy state of affairs that THEY have created.
Sporty, I agree with every word, syllable, comma, period. Nice job.
"The Tea Party has no plan to balance the budget. Try to find anyone in the Tea Party that has an actual plan to balance the budget."
Ron paul, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio all have balanced budget plans.
Maybe it is time for the moderate Republicans to create/join a third party that is more in keeping with being a functional party in a functional Congress that knows how to work for the common good.
This might be the golden opportunity to finally open the system to more than two viable parties.