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Beaten
But Not Defeated
Conservative
challengers to powerful GOP incumbents may have been
defeated in last week's primaries, but they aren't
going away.
Were
the primary election results on June 10 a rebuke to
conservatives? Yes and no.
Three hard-nosed conservative challengers failed to
displace incumbent Republican senators, although one
came within approximately 100 votes of doing so. All
three of the incumbents insisted that their voting
records are conservative and were careful to avoid
campaigning as supporters of higher taxes.
Two of the incumbent senators also claimed that they
were 100 percent pro-life. One had an endorsement
from the National Rifle Association.
In the fight for the GOP nomination in two Northern
Virginia Senate districts without an incumbent in
the contest, the more moderate candidate prevailed.
Yet a longtime incumbent in the House of Delegates
from Northern Virginia who led the campaign in 2002
to increase the sales tax was defeated by an
anti-tax Republican. In addition, the more
conservative candidate prevailed in the contest for
the GOP nomination for chairman of the Fairfax
County Board of Supervisors.
On the Peninsula, the leading opponent of the
proposed sales-tax increase last year, Del. Tom Gear,
R-Hampton, handily beat back a challenge by a
supporter of the 2002 ballot measure to raise the
sales tax. All of this suggests that the nomination
battles were never transformed into referenda over
the tax issue.
What obviously was a factor on June 10 was
incumbency. The candidates challenging the three
incumbent GOP senators were unable to persuade all
of the anti-tax, pro-life and pro-gun voters that
the incumbents should be unseated. Each incumbent
succeeded in varying degrees in closing the issue
gap between themselves and their challengers.
This is the first time in decades that either party
has experienced several challenges to long-time
incumbents. It is not likely to be an aberration
within the Republican Party. Regardless of the
outcome of the June 10 contests, grass-roots
Republicans who oppose government growth, favor
protecting human life and oppose governmental
restrictions on guns will continue to assert
themselves and to develop stronger methods of
imposing political accountability on incumbents.
This has always presented itself as a daunting and
long-term project. As the term limitation movement
discovered, the power of incumbency is considerable.
The June 10 elections were a terrible disappointment
to many grass-roots Republicans who were convinced
there is a big difference on issues between the
three Senate incumbents and their challengers. Most
of the voters didn't see it that way.
These nomination contests were an essential step
toward introducing political accountability within
the Republican Party. These challenges occurred
precisely because the GOP is now the majority party
and is likely to remain so unless incumbent
politicians drain the life out of it, as the British
Tory leaders did to their party in the early 1990s.
After years of controversy under the leadership of
Margaret Thatcher, the Tory leadership decided to
steer away from confrontation and polarizing issues.
At the end of the Thatcher period, the Tory Party
had an enviable grassroots membership. Thatcher's
successors managed to dissipate her legacy within a
few years.
The Tory Party of today is struggling just to remain
a factor in British politics. Its grassroots
membership is a mere shadow of what it was a decade
ago.
The same fate is in store for Republicans unless the
distance between elected leaders and the party
faithful is shortened. Humbling, painful nomination
contests are part of the price paid for a healthy
party.
June
16, 2003
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