Return of the center-right

Texas Gov. Rick Perry won re-election in 2006 with just 39 percent of the vote in a four-way field but defeated Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, handily in the Republican gubernatorial primary last week.

Hutchison is a fairly popular senator, but Perry based his strategy on courting the kind of conservative anger that has been behind the tea party movement. His anti-Washington rhetoric saw its peak when Perry made an erroneous statement about secession.

The forces within the Republican Party who are upset with Washington and skeptical of GOP moderates are probably happy about the primary results. But they also have cause for anger.

Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., whose recent election stalled Democratic attempts at health-care reform, joined a handful of other Republicans in supporting a recent Democratic jobs bill.

Many conservatives were furious. Brown’s Facebook group was trashed.

“Hey Judas, how many pieces of gold did you receive?” one angry commenter said.

Even Brown’s daughter’s Facebook got trashed.

This isn’t the last time conservatives will be disappointed by a candidate they help elect. Elections in 2010 will see the rise of plenty of ideological tea partiers, but it will also bring plenty of new moderate Republicans to Washington.

Republicans have done a fairly decent job of voting in lock-step against much of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Pressure from the GOP’s conservative base has played a big role, and it has made many moderate Republicans move to the right.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., supported a cap-and-trade plan to fight global warming when he was running for president but has now thrown out all sorts of unconvincing excuses to not support the current Democratic version.

But in cases in which moderate Republicans didn’t change, they lost their seats.

Other Republicans who joined Brown to support the jobs bill were George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine. These Republicans have long had a reputation as swing voters, but they lost key allies in 2008. Former Republican Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Norm Coleman of Minnesota lost reelection bids. Coleman’s loss gave Democrats their 60th seat.

Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., has a good chance of winning a senate seat in Obama’s home state. He won his primary fight with plenty of opposition from conservatives.

Rep. Michael N. Castle has a good chance of taking a Delaware senate seat and joining Brown as one of the few Republicans from the northeast. Castle has already proved to be one of the most liberal Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist might lose a Republican primary to compete for that state’s Senate seat — Crist supported Obama’s stimulus plan — but his more conservative challenger probably wouldn’t do as well in the general election.

But 2010 will probably see the rise of a new bloc of Republican swing votes and serve as a reminder that Republicans have been so radical because they have so few seats.


E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu