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One last indignity: The tea party swipes John Boehner’s seat
Source: Washington Post
One last indignity: The tea party swipes John Boehner’s seat
By Amber Phillips March 16 at 7:00 AM
It was one of the tea party’s few highlights in Tuesday’s congressional primaries. But laying claim to former GOP House speaker John Boehner’s old seat (in all likelihood) is a big one, both for the bragging rights and the momentum it gives House conservatives in their ongoing fight to purify their party ideologically.
Warren Davidson, a businessman and former Army Ranger, won a 15-way Republican primary Tuesday in the special election for Ohio’s 8th Congressional District. The tea party candidate rather easily bested more moderate candidates, including two state lawmakers, in a campaign that quickly became ground zero for the party’s ongoing identity struggle in the House that Boehner used to run. The winner of a June special election will serve out the rest of 2016 in Boehner’s seat, and in such a deep red congressional district, that winner is likely to be Davidson.
Let’s step back and assess why this matters. Sure, adding one lawmaker to the ranks of the hard-line House conservatives who have made life difficult for their moderate, pro-business Republican colleagues won’t single-handedly change the outcomes of most intra-party dramas. Davidson also won in large part thanks to a crowded primary, taking less than one-third of the vote.
But you can imagine how good it feels for the conservatives to get to say they took the former speaker’s seat, especially after spending the past few years directly challenging Boehner and, eventually, forcing him out. Congressional conservatives and their outside backers can now reasonably claim they won two battles against Boehner: They played a role in forcing his retirement last fall, and then they won the seat he vacated this spring.
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By Amber Phillips March 16 at 7:00 AM
It was one of the tea party’s few highlights in Tuesday’s congressional primaries. But laying claim to former GOP House speaker John Boehner’s old seat (in all likelihood) is a big one, both for the bragging rights and the momentum it gives House conservatives in their ongoing fight to purify their party ideologically.
Warren Davidson, a businessman and former Army Ranger, won a 15-way Republican primary Tuesday in the special election for Ohio’s 8th Congressional District. The tea party candidate rather easily bested more moderate candidates, including two state lawmakers, in a campaign that quickly became ground zero for the party’s ongoing identity struggle in the House that Boehner used to run. The winner of a June special election will serve out the rest of 2016 in Boehner’s seat, and in such a deep red congressional district, that winner is likely to be Davidson.
Let’s step back and assess why this matters. Sure, adding one lawmaker to the ranks of the hard-line House conservatives who have made life difficult for their moderate, pro-business Republican colleagues won’t single-handedly change the outcomes of most intra-party dramas. Davidson also won in large part thanks to a crowded primary, taking less than one-third of the vote.
But you can imagine how good it feels for the conservatives to get to say they took the former speaker’s seat, especially after spending the past few years directly challenging Boehner and, eventually, forcing him out. Congressional conservatives and their outside backers can now reasonably claim they won two battles against Boehner: They played a role in forcing his retirement last fall, and then they won the seat he vacated this spring.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/16/one-last-indignity-the-tea-party-swipes-john-boehners-seat/