Politics Monday: The Conservative Civil War

It's time to check up on the Conservative Civil War as the Republican Party wanders in the wilderness. I'm not sure wandering is exactly the correct term as they seem to be running as fast as they can...into each other. It is all part of the process of climbing out of the pit they have dug for themselves at the shovel of Bush, Rove, and company. To see how the war is going, here are a few exhibits to watch:

Exhibit A: "Going Outside the Party"

There is a race in for New York's 23rd Congressional District next week. The Congressman who was there left to become Obama's Secretary of the Army. The race has three main candidates: the Democrat, the Republican and the Conservative party's candidate. Prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh have endorsed the Conservative candidate over the Republican and now it appears that the Conservative candidate may come in second (to the Democrat) or actually win. The conservative base has been pushing this race and funneling funds to the Conservative candidate over the Republican primary winner. Why is it important to watch? If the Conservative pulls off a win, it will give the right wing additional enthusiasm to continue to purge the party of moderates and may push the Republican party to the right. If the Democrat takes what should be an easy district to win for Republicans, the argument that a broad based party is a winner may give the deeply partisan and crazy conservative base a wake-up call that going outside the party isn't a winning strategy.

Exhibit B: "Primary Battles"

The other strategy is to fight within the party for the nomination (in my opinion, the much wiser choice). Two interesting races to watch will be the Florida Senate GOP nomination and the Nevada State Senate District 4. The Florida Senate race is between popular Governor Charlie Crist and the right-wing's boy Marco Rubio. Crist was ok with taking stimulus funds and even (wait for this description of a horribly unamerican act) hugged President Obama at a rally. With moderate Florida repulicans pegging their hopes on Crist and the angry right propping up Marco Rubio, the Florida Senate primary will be ugly. The other race is the example on a more local level. Nevada State Senate District 4 has two Republican canidates of note. The first is Ty Cobb; the other is Ben Kieckhefer. Cobb is a fire-breathing, teabagging, true and red Republican and Kieckhefer is a moderate already endorsed by Nevada's GOP Senate Caucus. It's going to be a local battle between the moderate (let's actually govern than have blind faith in "values") wing and the radical (all taxes are bad, global warming is fake, Jesus should be our president) base of the republican party.

Generally, I would say that Exhibit B is the more likely way the Republican party will be able to regain its footing, find a better soul and move forward. However, currently only 1 in 5 registered voters in the United States even admit to being a Republican and Republican registration (even in the midst of deep teabagging brewed up anger) is still abymsally low.