Brown's Win a Lesson for Tea Partiers
The Tea Party movement has finally done what FrumForum has long been urging: they supported a less dogmatic Republican in a moderate state. But how long will this detente between moderate and conservative factions in the GOP last?
Every Republican in the nation rejoiced tonight at the unexpected news that GOP State Senator Scott Brown was elected to replace the late Ted Kennedy. Brown’s fundraising came largely through the wildly successful ‘moneybomb’ campaigns that he organized in the last week of the race, when Tea Partiers showed up in force to support the Republican that might provide the 41st vote against President Obama’s health care plan.
One of FrumForum’s most oft-repeated points is that the GOP must represent a big tent, and perhaps our most frequent criticism of the Tea Party movement is that they demand unblemished purity.
Tonight the Tea Party witnessed the spoils of allowing ideological flexibility; they learned the benefits of backing moderate candidates when they run in moderate jurisdictions.
After all, this is Massachusetts, and Senator-elect Scott Brown is no Tea Partier.
In an interview with FrumForum, Brown said he was a “Massachusetts Republican” who wouldn’t hesitate to cross party lines if he deemed it necessary. Brown told us that there “must be room for everybody, there has to be, in this [Republican] tent.” Excellent reporting by Byron Tau shows us that Brown thought it is “short-sighted to have purity tests." When asked about her stance on gay marriage and abortion, Brown's state chairman, Jennifer Nassour, said that "social issues are personal issues... I am not [for] legislating anyone’s personal views."
Would many Tea Partiers have found this acceptable outside the context of this special election, on which the fate of Obama’s healthcare reforms presumably lay? If the stakes were different, would they not have tried to find a Rubio, or a DeVore, or a Hoffman to run against Brown? If that had happened, would a Republican have prevailed in the state of Massachusetts?
How long will it be before Tea Partiers turn against Sen. Scott Brown? This is a politician who, if not compelled by his own views, will be compelled by the nature of his state to express moderation if he wishes to be re-elected in just two and a half years.
The lesson from tonight is clear: to win in moderate states, Tea Partiers must allow for some flexibility. They must step back from an insistence on purity where to be pure is to lose.
Remember this feeling of victory tonight, and ask yourself: do I want to feel this way again for races in Massachusetts? In New York? In California? In Illinois?