‘Tea Party’ Republicans Rebel Against National GOP
Florida, Other Senate Races Pit Conservative Base Against Moderate Recruits
By David Weigel 5/14/09 1:41 PM
On March 11, when Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) entered the 2010 U.S. Senate race, Marco Rubio was in Washington. The former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives was ready for this moment, rumored for weeks, the entry of a Republican party dream candidate who threatened to push him out of the race. When Crist put out a press release announcing the run, Rubio’s campaign pushed out a Web ad that showed Crist gazing into President Barack Obama’s eyes at a rally for the economic stimulus package. As Crist went about his work for the day, Rubio met with possible campaign allies and conservative media.
In the office of the David All Group, a new media firm that’s putting together much of Rubio’s web campaign, David All clicked through the windows on his MacBook Pro and watched the social networks churn. Traffic at Rubio’s web site was surging upward. Conservatives were retweeting Rubio’s punchy messages, such as “Elections are best when they are about clear choices. Let the debate begin.”
“This is Barack versus Hillary,” said All. “This is going to be a battle about what the Republican Party stands for. We have to make a decision: Are we going to get behind candidates who are real reformers who can help the Republicans recover its brand?”
Florida’s Republican Senate primary has quickly become a contest between the party’s base and its national leadership. Since the start of the Obama administration, the national party has attempted to capture the energy of the base by endorsing anti-spending Tea Parties, opposing the Democratic agenda, and blaming the losses of 2006 and 2008 on a move away from fiscal conservatism. At the same time, it has courted more moderate candidates like Florida’s Crist, California’s former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and former Gov. Tom Ridge (R-Pa.). Until he became a Democrat this month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee had supported Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) over conservative foot soldier Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania’s Senate race. This disconnect between message and recruitment is starting to irk conservative activities and setting up heated primaries that the party would have preferred to avoid.
The coming Florida primary is shaping up to be the most brutal of the ideological primaries. Rubio, a 39-year-old Cuban-American who served for eight years in the Florida House — the last two years as speaker — entered the Senate race on May 5. Early on, he said that anyone who voted with the Senate Republican moderates “might as well be a Democrat.” In March, Rubio quietly signed up Ann Herberger, a prolific fundraiser for Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, to stockpile cash for a campaign. In April, he came to Washington to talk with the Club for Growth, the fiscal conservative PAC that until April was led by Pat Toomey, and one that welcomed Crist into the race with pointed criticism. This, and an aggressive media strategy that has resulted in warm interviews with Fox News and National Review, has allowed Rubio to build buzz with conservative activists who fully expect Crist to lead the first rounds of polls.
“It will be closer than it looks right now,” said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. “It’s Crist’s race to lose but there is a pent-up animus against him from mainstream Republican voters who don’t like the fact that he’s cozied up to President Obama.”
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http://washingtonindependent.com/43036/tea-party-republicans-rebel-against-national-gop
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