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July 31, 2013 12:08 PM UTC

Pew Report: Tea Party Still Controls Republican Primaries

  • 17 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

A new poll from Pew Research is bad (BAD) news for Republicans in Colorado and around the country:

Move in a more conservative or moderate direction on policy? By 54% to 40%, Republican and Republican-leaning voters want the party’s leaders to move further to the right. Not surprisingly, conservatives and those who agree with the Tea Party overwhelmingly favor moving in a more conservative direction, while moderates and liberals would like to see the party take more centrist positions. Yet the more moderate wing of the party is a minority generally, and makes up an even smaller share of the likely primary electorate. [Pols emphasis]

Tea Party runs Republican Party
Everybody in the crazy pool!

That's not good — not if you are a rational Republican, anyway. As we've written time and again in this space, the greatest threat facing the Republican Party continues to be the outsized influence of the Tea Party. When only the most right-wing candidate can win a Primary, the Republican moving on to a General Election is essentially fighting with one hand tied behind his or her back.

Republican Party officials are well aware of this problem, but there's not a whole hell of a lot they can do about it — particularly when the Tea Party is a collection of a bunch of different groups.

Both local and national Republican Party officials recognize the need to moderate their policy positions and try to appeal to voters other than, well, old white guys. They are correct in their read of the situation, but they can't do a damn thing about it when the Tea Party wing of the Party refuses to play along.

Check out the sobering statistics from the Pew study in the box at right. The big news, obviously, is that the Tea Party continues to exert the most influence over the Republican Primary process:

Tea Party Republicans have influence in the GOP partly because of their high level of political engagement. Overall, they make up a minority (37%) of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents nationally. Yet this group is more likely than other GOP voters to say they always vote in primary elections; as a result they make up about half of the Republican primary electorate (49%).

In Colorado, this could be good news for someone like Sen. Greg Brophy, who wants the GOP nomination to challenge incumbent Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper. Nationally, it means Democrats have a definite advantage in the 2016 race for President as it is likely that the GOP will put forth a right-wing candidate.

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17 thoughts on “Pew Report: Tea Party Still Controls Republican Primaries”

  2. The Tea Party (aka The Creature of Dr. Rovenstein) will ultimately destroy the GOP.  You can't finance and legitimize the worst elements of the Right Wing fringe like that, and then expect them to keep doing your bidding.

     

    1. Reads like a recruitment ad for moderate Dems to run in any contestable (R) district.  I know, that may not sound like a lot, but it's a start.

    1. That is freaking GENIUS, Twitty!  I would pay cash money to again watch that little psycho ride his Shetland pony across the High Prairie, spout completely meaningless sound bites, and shoot his big (too big to wield in only one of his tiny hands) gun at paper targets of Osama Bin Laden (I wonder who he'd use now?).

       

  6. This would be good news if the Democrats would ever take advantage of it.  In order to do this, they need to hang the national party and the stupid stuff done in other states around every single damn "Republican."  I.e. they need to nationalize this election just like the Republicans did in 1994.  Frankly, this is the only time that that can happen in the next eight years, because they have a lame duck President with the national clout to do it.  But I bet anyone $10 that our dear community organizer President doesn't have the balls and won't do it because he doesn't want to hurt feelings.  And no one else could possibly pull the Democratic Party together to do it.  So, this fact. which has been true for over 20 years, won't make a difference to Democrats at all, because they don't know how to push their advantage.

    1. You're probably right, Craig.

      If the republicans had this "sword of Damacles" hanging over the Democrats, it would be a far different story. They are ruthless, deliberate, and remorseless when given the opportunity to tear down or destroy………..anyone.

      Building, governing, moving the Nation forward, doing the job, that's not them, but carnage, chaos, and the politics of destruction? That's them.

      On the other hand, I honestly don't see this as being as positive a temperature reading as some. Reason being, in hopelessly baggered Districts (Colorado has 3) Representatives are elected by an ideologically and theologically extreme base to disrupt, destroy, and eliminate the Federal Government regardless of the consequences to the Nation. In really republican Districts, when sane, common sense candidates are destroyed in primaries, the outcome is a hideous and deformed mutancy that has allready paralyzed the House and Senate for 5 years.

      I just don't buy the idea of a really extreme, whacked, nutcase teabagger like say lamborn or chaffitz or steve king (r-IA) or mike lee ever being bested by a Democrat, no matter how talented he/she might be. So the worse they get, the more fragile and vulnerale our Democracy becomes.

      I't is scary to me.

  8. Remember, Itlduso, it was one of their own who called them that. It seems like the poor Rs will just have to wait for those old white guys to die out. The younger generation (20-30-somethings) aren't having much of that nonsense. The rebellion agains their parents isn't as loud as in earlier generations, but it exists. In the mean time, while the teabaggers spout their anti-gummit rants, Democrats need to remind people and keep reminding them that the highest number of net tax recipients are in the reddest states.  

      1. Nope, just pointing out that the old white guys run your beloved GOP.  If the GOP had any kind of regard for young people, or women, or anyone darker than a latte with extra 2% milk, you might have a point.  Nice butthurt, bro.

  9. Except, of course, that the Republican seem to be doing just fine in the several states.  Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida all voted for Obama in the 2012 election, but have right wing controlled state legislatures and state governorships. Obama can not get anything done in Congress, percisely because of the power of the right wing in the House and the threat they can represent to Republican senators up for re-elections in 2014.

    The US populace is overwhelming in favor of background checks.  How is that working out for Obama and the Dems in Congress? How is anything working out for Obama and the Dems in Congress?  

    I will pause for the "sound and fury signifying nothing" comments.  My observation is valid and my concern is real.  I would welcome comments that say how does this current poll jive with what is actually happening politically.

    Remember, the Dems won the popular vote in 2000.  That went well.

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