Opinion: GOP Is Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

(June 11) -- After Scott Brown shocked the political world by winning Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat in Massachusetts five months ago, it seemed that everything was coming up roses for the Republican Party. President Barack Obama's health care plan was on life support, Democrats were sullen and divided, and there was growing talk that the GOP could even take back control of Congress and permanently derail the Obama presidency.

But instead of taking advantage of the political opportunity, the GOP establishment now finds itself fighting a rear-guard action against its most extreme fringe -- and seems increasingly unable to control the angry voices it has spurred forward.

Consider the what's happened in the past few weeks.

• Last month GOP voters in Kentucky rejected the favored candidate of Mitch McConnell, the state's senior senator and Senate minority leader, for Rand Paul, a libertarian ophthalmologist and darling of the tea party movement. Paul quickly became a national punch line after suggesting that he didn't support key provisions of the Civil Rights Acts and, even more bizarrely, defended BP against criticism from the Obama administration.

• This past Tuesday, Republican voters in Nevada doubled down on support for far-right candidates, nominating another tea party favorite, Sharron Angle, to face off against one of the Democrats' most vulnerable incumbents, Harry Reid. Angle has called for the U.S. to pull out of the United Nations and abolish the Department of Education and the Internal Revenue Service. She also supports a "patriot" organization called the Oath Keepers, a group of uniformed soldiers and police who have pledged to refuse orders they believe to be unconstitutional.

• In California, GOP voters rejected a moderate former congressman, Tom Campbell, whose political persona closely matches that of two-term Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Instead, they nominated former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, whose far-right positions on abortion, immigration and climate change place her firmly out of the mainstream in California politics.

• In Iowa, former four-term Gov. Terry Branstad barely held off an underfunded primary challenge from a far-right social conservative candidate who is now mulling a third-party run.

• And in Florida, the primary campaign of Marco Rubio has driven Republican Gov. Charlie Crist to launch an independent candidacy -- and he now holds the lead in recent polls.

Legislatively, the story isn't much better. Against unanimous opposition, Obama and his Democratic allies scored a huge political victory on health care reform, boosting party supporters going into the election season. And this past April, Republicans in Arizona passed a tough new immigration law that has angered Hispanic voters nationwide.

At a time of great political opportunity, Republicans, instead of crafting messages that will appeal to independent voters and even some Democrats, have continued down the same dangerous political road that cost them control of Congress and the presidency in 2006 and 2008. They are mired in intra-party purity tests that not only move the party further to the right but also risk undermining their electoral chances come November.

None of this should come as a huge surprise, considering the extreme political positions taken by GOP lawmakers in Washington. For much of the past year and a half, they've cast the nation's policy challenges in the direst possible terms. Devoid of new policy ideas outside the usual calls for new tax cuts and reduced spending, the Republican message has been distilled down to irresponsible fear-mongering about socialism in Washington or declarations that freedom is at risk as long as Obama resides at the White House.

Is it any wonder that the party's most extreme wing has responded in kind, casting its venom not just at Democrats but at the entire political establishment? Republicans at one point may have seen the tea party movement as a political asset or as a means of channeling frustration at Washington. Instead, Republicans have helped to foster a torrent of often incoherent political anger that they seem unable to control.

While it is hardly smooth sailing for Democrats, the party, as a whole, has taken a very different course, supporting candidates that reside more closely in the political mainstream. It's far too early to say if that will translate into political success come November -- indeed, it still seems clear that Democrats will lose seats then. But at the very least, Democrats appear far more willing to accept different points of view in the party.

For Republicans, dysfunction and division now rule the roost, and moderate candidates need not apply, even in predominately blue states. The anger and sense of alienation on the far right is at risk of turning the modern Republican Party into a rump party, dominated by its most extreme and uncompromising wing. And in a very real sense, the GOP establishment has no one to blame but itself.


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