Tea Party: An incumbent senator ousted

The Tea Party just claimed its first scalp, said Joe Klein in Time.com. The victim was three-term Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah—a “standard-issue conservative” who sometimes crossed the aisle to solve problems. Having been found guilty of reasonable behavior and political compromise, Bennett was duly punished at a convention of Utah Republicans last weekend. Tea Party activists denied Bennett the GOP Senate nomination, effectively sweeping him away in a “tidal wave of witless extremism.” The American Conservative Union has rated Bennett 84 (out of a possible 100), said Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. But during the Bush administration, Bennett voted to bail out failing banks. That bailout saved the economy from disaster, but to Tea Party activists, it was a form of treason. “The long-promised purge is on.” The GOP is rapidly evolving into a rigidly ideological, far-right party.

“Weep not for Bob Bennett,” said National Review Online in an editorial. Over the past two years, he ruined his conservative credentials with several ill-advised votes—and by introducing his own health-care reform bill that rivaled Obamacare in its wrongheadedness. Bennett’s legislation featured new regulations on insurance companies, subsidies for consumers, and a dreaded individual mandate requiring people to buy insurance. That makes Bennett wrong about the key issue of the past two years, which is why two more-conservative candidates finished ahead of him in the convention voting. In solidly Republican Utah, one of them is assured of victory in November. Bennett’s defeat should be “no occasion for sadness beyond the circle of his friends and family.”

Actually, all incumbent Republicans will join in the mourning, said Jonathan Martin and Manu Raju in Politico.com. If even a widely respected, reliable conservative who brought back millions to his state can be booted in a primary, Republicans now fear, the “fevered emotions of the moment” may lead to “reflexive voting against any and all incumbents.” Already, veteran Sen. John McCain is fighting for his political life against Tea Party favorite J.D. Hayworth in Arizona, while in Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist fared so poorly against Tea Party–backed Marco Rubio that he left the GOP to campaign for the Senate as an independent. Bennett’s loss marks another stage in the Senate’s transformation—from a body that “prizes collegiality and compromise to a more partisan and sharp-edged institution.”

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