As noted a couple of days ago, Republicans are now FOURTH in voter registration in Nevada, as they are out-registered by first-place Democrats, second placed "nonpartisan", and third-placed Independent American Party, a hard-right fringe outfit. Even the fringe wackos are out-performing Republicans.
Same dynamic is happening in this special election in upstate New York.
Dede Scozzafava, the GOP nominee in a key upcoming House special election, is running dangerously low on campaign cash, according to several GOP sources familiar with her spending and fundraising [...]
Democratic nominee Bill Owens is outspending Scozzafava on television advertising by a nearly 12-1 ratio, according to a media buy database provided by a Republican operative tracking the race.
She’s also being outspent in the sprawling district by Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, the third-party candidate who has peeled off conservative support from the moderate state assemblywoman. Scozzafava has drawn fire from the right over her support for abortion rights and gay marriage, and the GOP schism over her candidacy is reflected in her weak fundraising.
The race is bitterly dividing House Republicans.
Just 17 members — about 10 percent of the GOP conference — have written checks to Scozzafava’s campaign. They include House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Pete Sessions (Texas) and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who is in charge of recruiting candidates to run next year.
Notably absent from that list is Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), the Republican Conference chairman. Pence, the former chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, has refused to endorse Scozzafava.
“I don’t think this is an NRCC problem. This is a much broader Republican problem,” the conservative lawmaker added. “The inability of the Republican coalition to coalesce is going to be a huge challenge for us in 2010.”’
In an effort to prove Scozzafava can attract conservatives, Sessions pushed Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) to step up and endorse her. After his announcement, Hensarling took shots from some prominent conservative blogs and media outlets, with some going so far as to lob unfounded charges about Hensarling’s personal life.
Leadership aides blame those incidents on Pence, and say his decision not to endorse Scozzafava harms cohesion.
“It breaks down the leadership team when we all can’t be together,” one leadership aide said. “When you see a good guy like Jeb Hensarling step into the fray to take that bullet, you kind of scratch your head and say, ‘Do we really want a Republican majority, or are we in it for something else here?’"
Heavens, Republicans divided? We're certainly seeing this trend all around the country. As conservative activists become increasingly agitated, they look more and more eager and able to take on the GOP from the Right. It's the inverse of the Ralph Nader factor which hurt Democrats earlier this decade.
But while Nader (and a handful of other Greens) simply played spoiler, these conservatives are actually performing better than the GOP. That's pretty amazing, and bodes well for 2010 as it emboldens conservatives to take out or damage more electable moderate Republicans.
- Connecticut Republican Rob Simmons, long a moderate and the GOP's favored choice to take on Chris Dodd in a very Democratic state, just said:
I've made it a habit over the years to carry my Constitution in my pocket as a reminder of what this country and what this country's government is all about," Simmons told a recent event. "But more recently because of the participation of many of you, I've added something to my Constitution. I've added a tea bag.
Simmons faces a tough primary against several hard-right Republicans.
- Rep. Mark Kirk, the GOP establishment's favored choice in the race for Obama's old Senate seat, has quickly ditched the "moderate" veneer he used to win his Democratic-leaning Chicago-area House seat for years. He's backtracked on cap and trade (he voted for it in the House), and has taken to railing against favored Teabagger target ACORN and has become particularly incoherent on DADT (among other issues) as he walks a fine line between surviving a primary against a hard-core conservative, and remaining electable statewide.
- Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who would be a safe easy win for Sen. Mel Martinez' open seat, faces a serious challenge by right-wing teabagger Marco Rubio. And while the establishment support and money is still backing Crist, we're seeing a ton of this sort of thing at the grassroots level:
As expected, Marco Rubio has won another county Republican Party straw poll by a huge margin over Gov. Charlie Crist—this one in Palm Beach County by 90-17 — leaving Republicans and others to continue to debate over whether such votes matter.
Rubio has already won straw polls of county Republican parties in Bay, Gilchrist, Hernando, Highlands, Jefferson, Lee and Pasco counties, many by lopsided margins — 75-1 in Highlands, for example.
The vote tonight was different, however. The earlier ones were all in rural or suburban counties. Palm Beach is the first big urban county in which the Republican Party organization has held such a vote. Large, urban counties should be Crist's strong points.
Conservatives are on safer ground in Florida, since Democrats don't have a top tier challenger for the seat, and would likely hold the Senate seat regardless of who Republicans nominate.
- Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett faces an insurrection inside his party, as Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is taking on the rabidly conservative incumbent because he's not conservative enough. And Utah has a weird system that makes Shurtleff's bid that much more plausible:
GOP candidates go through a May 2010 nominating convention, where ballots are taken repeatedly with the lowest-scoring candidate removed after each round, until two men remain, both of whom advance to the primary... but if any candidate gets more than 60% of the vote at any point, he not only wins the nomination but there isn't even a primary election [...]
If Shurtleff is correct about having locked down the support of the conservative wing among the state legislators, he may have a shot at winning it outright at the state convention.
While we have aggressively pursued primary challenges in the Democratic side, we've done a fantastic job of pushing electable progressive alternatives to milquetoast or corporatist Dems (e.g. Al Franken, Jon Tester, Jim Webb, Joe Sestak, etc.). Our friends on the Right are doing the opposite. The last two cycles, hard-right conservatives eliminated more electable "moderates" in several races, allowing Democrats to pick up seats in some surprising places (Maryland 1, Idaho 1, Michigan 7), as well as giving Democrats easy pickups in others (like New Mexico Senate and the Arlen Specter switch in Pennsylvania, and softening up Lincoln Chafee for his eventual loss in Rhode Island).