Usually when a challenger bumps off an incumbent in a GOP primary, it's a victory for conservative outsiders over the party establishment, but Tuesday's election in Kansas's safely red 1st Congressional District was the exact opposite. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a member of the nihilist House Freedom Caucus, went down to a punishing 56-44 defeat at the hands of physician Roger Marshall, who had the support of agricultural interests that Huelskamp had infuriated with his crusade against farm subsidies.
Huelskamp had a horrible relationship with then-Speaker John Boehner, and reportedly plotted an unsuccessful coup against him in 2013. Boehner retaliated by getting Huelskamp kicked off the House Agriculture Committee, which only further angered local agriculture interests and farmers in this rural seat. Marshall and his allies aired several ads arguing that Kansas couldn’t afford not to have a congressman on the powerful committee, and the attacks seem to have worked: As this map from Matthew Isbell shows, Huelskamp fared worst in the counties where farming is king. Huelskamp had urged Paul Ryan to give him his post back, but the new speaker declined to throw him a life preserver.
Ultimately, the combined forces of Big Ag and House leadership were simply too great for Huelskamp to overcome. Establishment-oriented groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were only too happy to join in the effort to oust Huelskamp, and while the radically anti-tax Club for Growth did try to rescue him, this time, their help wasn't enough.
"Mainstream" Republicans are certainly celebrating this win, with Boehner literally toasting Huelskamp’s defeat on Tuesday. Still, there are another hundred guys just like Huelskamp in Congress, so it's not as though kicking one lunatic to the curb is going make Ryan's life any easier. What's more, as we alluded, it's the nutters who've typically had far more success against the insiders, and they're hopping mad about Huelskamp's loss. Freedom Caucus chair Jim Jordan, for instance, accused "special interests" of taking their "revenge" against Huelskamp; how long before Jordan and his brigades take their own revenge against their perceived enemies?
Far from sending a warning to the extremists that they'd better get in line, it seems only to have provoked them. One step forward, two steps back. And that photo of a smiling John Boehner swilling a glass of red wine will only infuriate them further.