Alex Isenstadt, Charles Mahtesian Alex Isenstadt, Charles Mahtesian – Tue Nov 3, 4:38 am ET

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.

But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.

Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one — facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.

“I would say it’s the tip of the spear,” said Dick Armey, the former GOP House majority leader who now serves as chairman of FreedomWorks, an organization that has been closely aligned with the tea party movement. “We are the biggest source of energy in American politics today.”

“What you’re going to see,” said Armey, “is moderates and conservatives across the country in primaries.”

These high-stakes primaries, pitting the activist wing of the party against the establishment wing, stand to have a profound impact on the 2010 election landscape since they will create significant problems for moderate candidates recruited by the national party precisely because they appear well-suited to win in places that are not easily — or even plausibly — won by conservative candidates.

The tensions between the two visions threaten to limit the party’s gains in an election year that is shaping up in its favor.

Party strategists worry that well-funded, well-organized challenges from the right could force Republicans to exhaust precious resources on messy primary fights — or force moderate candidates to adopt more strident positions early on that could haunt them during the final months of the campaign.

“For me, what this says is, we need to take a deep breath and decide whether [moderates and conservatives] work together or not,” said Tom Davis, the former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “And if we don’t, it can get very, very ugly.”

Activists contend that the only way back to majority status is to embrace the conservative principles that the party jettisoned during the past decades once it became too enamored of power. To them, the issue is less about ideological purity than about the compromises they see the party’s Washington establishment making and what they contend is a lack of support for conservative candidates who are deemed unelectable by GOP solons.

“New York 23, on some scale, is the first battle of a larger internal Republican debate over how to define the party,” said former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a conservative who is challenging Crist for the Senate nomination. “They want us to vote for their candidates, but they don’t want us to run for office.”

Rubio’s race is one that many on the right point to as the next New York 23, a contest where conservatives and tea party activists are in open revolt about Crist and the national party’s decision to endorse him despite his embrace — literally — of President Barack Obama and his stimulus package during a Florida visit in February.

Rubio has won nearly a dozen county GOP straw polls across the state and is rapidly becoming a darling of the tea party movement.

Everett Wilkinson, an organizer for the Florida Tea Party Patriots, said his group plans to take part in get-out-the-vote activities and other efforts to deny Crist the GOP nomination, despite the fact that Crist leads both Rubio and Rep. Kendrick Meek, the likely Democratic nominee, by a comfortable margin.

To Wilkinson, he’d rather burn the house down if it means saving it.

“We would lose if Charlie Crist got elected or if another person who doesn’t support our policies got elected,” he said. “Our members are actively going to get out there and create awareness of the governor’s actions.”

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a leading conservative who has endorsed Rubio, said he viewed the Florida Senate race as distinct from the New York special election. But he agreed with Rubio’s contention that the national party needed to broaden its outlook on candidates.

“I’m not saying our party made a mistake, because there’s a debate within the party over what we should be,” he said. “If we just start looking at who can win — sometimes we might miss a gem in the rough in effect. And I said from the beginning, that’s what I think Rubio is.”

Florida turns out to be one of many states where Senate candidates favored — in one way or another — by the National Republican Senatorial Committee are facing serious pushback from the grass roots.

In almost every situation, the lay of the land is the same. Whether it’s California, Illinois, Connecticut, New Hampshire or Kentucky, the NRSC has found a candidate who appears to be an exceptionally strong general election prospect — either well-known, well-financed or ideologically well-suited to the state’s politics — who is nevertheless meeting with tough resistance at the grass-roots level from activists who believe the conservative cause would be better served over the long term, even if it means the party nominee loses in the short term.

Even in Illinois, where polls shows Kirk would be highly competitive as a general election candidate in a state in which Republicans have been crushed in recent elections, the prospect of picking up the president’s former Senate seat isn’t enough to win over many activists.

“We’re going to work hard as hell to make sure Mark Kirk doesn’t win,” said Evert Evertsen, an Illinois tea party organizer. “Mark Kirk is about as liberal as Arlen Specter was.”

GOP House and Senate incumbents are fair game, too.

In Utah, where Bennett has won reelection by landslide margins since first winning the seat in 1992, disgruntled conservatives are looking to take him down in next year’s state party convention after his Wall Street bailout vote last fall and several other high-profile votes in which he broke with the right.

In the House, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) is among a handful of GOP veterans facing primary challenges of varying competitiveness for their departures from conservative orthodoxy.

“It’s kind of like investors in a company saying they’re not going to tolerate it anymore. And that’s what we’re seeing here,” said Eric Odom, executive director of the American Liberty Alliance, a libertarian-oriented group. “We’re already gearing up. This is just the beginning.”

Manu Raju and Josh Kraushaar contributed to this story.

Bloomburg spent $10 million of his own money to get (illegially) re-elected for his third term. Money talks.

Conservatives are not challenging GOP candidates. They are challenging "moderates". This is just a tug-of-war to see which way the party is going.

"Moderates" running as GOP will NEVER win, if conservatives run seperately, as we saw in one race yesterday. Conservatives are the only hope for the party. And I don't say "only hope" as if it's crumbling. I mean the party will swing "conservative" rather than "moderate". Moderate is far too close to liberal. In fact, some liberals call themself moderate. The GOP will never have that distinction. Republican is synonymous with conservative. Where the party needs to go is back to conservative values.

If you are a Republican (and I know you aren't), conservativism is a good thing.

Keep in mind that conservativism was the largest identified group, in recent polls, outpacing liberals and moderates. Anyone who runs as a moderate will draw from both Democrats and Republicans. That might be a good thing, if there was another party to choose from. But as long as Republican and Democrats are the major parties, being a party of conservativism is the best choice for Republicans... in my opinion.

Speaking from the conservative position,

We cannot (will not) compromise our beliefs for political expediency.
This is too hard for the average career politician to comprehend.

Hence the rapid ascendancy, and even quicker decendancy of the GOP.

Either the party leaders in the republican party will adopt this, or we will take it over, by going RINO hunting every election.

Even if this leaves the Dem's in power for a few more years!

Americans have not chosen their candidates for public office for quite some time! I believe that
Pres. Ronald Reagan was the first, and LAST in my lifetime!
Time to change THAT!

Every one here swore an oath to "Uphold and protect the constitution..." I still hold by this oath, and I dam(n) well intend to hold all in public office to it!

We may have to break a few (EGGS). But in the interest of our children, and generations yet unborn, it is a fight worth fighting.

I lost the cold war, I'll be da(m)n if I lose this one!

quote:

I lost the cold war, I'll be da(m)n if I lose this one!

You "lost" the cold war? What does that mean?

quote:

Originally posted by Al-Fajr:

quote:

I lost the cold war, I'll be da(m)n if I lose this one!

You "lost" the cold war? What does that mean?

The "Cold war" was the non shooting stand off between western nations. IE, NATO and the Warsaw pact nations. (Russia)
It was to stop the spread of communism.

Apparently, while we were overseas, they came in the back door.

With the help of the intelligencia in American colleges, Kruschev wasn't joking

I know what the cold war was - I guess I never realized we lost it.

Maybe that is why they never approved that Cold War Victory Medal.

quote:

I guess I never realized we lost it.

I thought we won it.

Ips, while this is indeed an attempt to set a clearly defined course for the Republican Party for years to come, I wonder how much damage will result if both conservative and moderate camps go after each other with a vengence.

FJ you may have called it. If it indeed does become real messy then the Dems may very well be in power for at least another administration or two. While many of us don't agree with a lot of conservative views, we equally don't subscribe to a lot of the liberal approach as well.

So the question becomes, why sacrifice winnable moderate candidates we middle of the road "swing voters" will go with because we reject all party lines in favor of voting our conscience?

quote:

Originally posted by ipscone:

quote:

I guess I never realized we lost it.

I thought we won it.

So did I,
until Nov. 5th of last year.

quote:

Originally posted by Deanosaur:
Ips, while this is indeed an attempt to set a clearly defined course for the Republican Party for years to come, I wonder how much damage will result if both conservative and moderate camps go after each other with a vengence.

FJ you may have called it. If it indeed does become real messy then the Dems may very well be in power for at least another administration or two. While many of us don't agree with a lot of conservative views, we equally don't subscribe to a lot of the liberal approach as well.

So the question becomes, why sacrifice winnable moderate candidates we middle of the road "swing voters" will go with because we reject all party lines in favor of voting our conscience?

It was the conserative take over that brought the Republicans to power for the first time in forty years,
It was the repudiations of these ideas by the party that put them back in the minority.
If the Repubs are to ever gain prominence, it will be the conservatives that will put them back in power.

Points well written but wouldn't the Repubs want a majority like the mid nineties even if it meant a mix of conservatives and moderates in order to push the Party's agenda?

I understand you all are setting up your basic ideological roadmap now but unless you have a united Party then things may get away from you in 2010 as they did in this last election.

So while cleaning house is a good thing, why go after your own when the Dems are still holding onto some pretty heavy majorities in key places? Why not just go after them instead and then regain the majority?