Inside the Group that Defeated Bob Bennett

Alexander Zaitchik of The Washington Independent has written a profile of the group that took down Bob Bennett in Utah:

Press accounts of Bennett’s defeat have generally focused on the state’s peculiar nominating system, in which an otherwise popular candidacy can be derailed at precinct-level caucuses that elect delegates to the closed party convention, from which only the top two candidates survive to face the voting public.

The state’s caucus-and-convention system, however, tells only half the story. Bennett and his fellow GOP casualties did not fall victim to Utah’s election system alone. Nor were they felled simply by some vague anti-incumbent mood. Rather, they were victims of a well-organized and increasingly dominant Tea Party coalition that over the last year has established a tightening grip on Utah’s Republican Party—and that has big plans for the rest of the country as well.

At the vanguard of this Beehive State conservative revolt is a states’ rights organization called the Patrick Henry Caucus (PHC). Along with better-known groups such as the 9.12 Project and Eagle Forum, the PHC mobilized enough activists at the precinct level to deny Bennett and a handful of others another election. Now they are preparing to do the same with Hatch.

“The Patrick Henry Caucus is leading the groups now dominating the conventions and determining who will run for the state legislature and national offices,” says Troy Williams, director of political programming at KRCL, a radio station in Salt Lake City. “They have effective control of the direction of the state party, and have a Mormon missionary zeal when it comes to spreading the gospel of states’ rights around the country.”

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