I hesitate to write about the senate race in Nebraska because I kind of doubt that most of my readers care too much. But the contest is interesting for a variety of reasons. It’s an open seat, created by the retirement of controversial Democratic Senator Ben Nelson. It’s widely considered the best pick-up opportunity for the Republicans, who need a net increase of three seats (if they also win the presidency) or four seats (if Romney loses) in order to take control of the upper chamber of Congress. The GOP Establishment is firmly behind the candidacy of Attorney General Jon Bruning. But Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), the Club for Growth, and many Tea Party organizations are opposing Bruning’s candidacy and throwing their support behind State Treasurer Don Stenberg. For the record, Stenberg lost a primary to Chuck Hagel in 1996 and a general election to Ben Nelson in 2000.
Obviously, the extreme anti-tax right-wingers think Stenberg is more conservative than Bruning, but he hasn’t been able to raise much money on his own, and he doesn’t have much indigenous support. For these reasons, he’d probably be a weaker candidate to go up against the Democrat’s candidate, former U.S. senator and presidential candidate Bob Kerrey.
What I find so fascinating about this race is the way it demonstrates fissures in the Republican Party. Let me quote from Jim DeMint:
But DeMint, who several years ago launched a mission to elect more conservatives to the Senate, has remained staunchly opposed [to Bruning].
He torched the U.S. Chamber of Commerce this week for backing Bruning.
“As you may know, the Chamber supported the failed stimulus program, the Wall Street bailout, the auto bailout, cash-for-clunkers, as well as many other corporate welfare schemes,” DeMint wrote in a fundraising appeal for Stenberg. “The corporate welfare lobby in Washington wants to defeat Don Stenberg because he isn’t afraid to stand up to them.”
The Republican Party basically exists to serve four partially overlapping groups: the people at the top of the financial services industry, religious and social conservatives, libertarian anti-government guns rights folks, and the Chamber of Commerce. It’s possible for the interests of these groups to conflict, but it’s not too common for Wall Street and the Chamber to disagree. It’s even less common for Republican politicians to buck both the Street and the Chamber at the same time. But that’s what Jim DeMint is doing. In attacking the Wall Street bailout, the stimulus bill, and interventions in the auto industry, DeMint is taking an extreme anti-business stance. And with the Club for Growth by his side, we see another strange fissure. The Club for Growth is mainly concerned with enforcing a no-new-taxes orthodoxy on the Republican Party, but this is normally seen as a means to an end, not an end in itself. By starving the government of funds, they hope to reduce its regulatory reach. The aims of the Club for Growth and Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce are normally aligned. But that is not the case in this race in Nebraska.
We can see this fissure opening up in Washington DC, too. Today, it was announced that former Club for Growth president Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania will be taking over the leadership of the Republican Steering Committee from Jim DeMint.
“Sen. Pat Toomey is a proven and trusted conservative and I’m very glad he’s taking on this new role,” said DeMint. “I’ve fought hard over the last few years to help elect new conservatives to the Senate and it’s very rewarding to see them step into positions of leadership.
“I’ve enjoyed chairing this group for the past five years, and I look forward to working closely with Pat and the other Steering members to advance conservative principles at this critical time when our country needs them most,” he added.
Here in Pennsylvania, we see Pat Toomey as an ideologue, but mainly in the service of Wall Street and corporate America. If he is going to become a champion of the Tea Party, that will be news to us.
Now, one of the infuriating things about Ben Nelson is his allegiance to business interests above the concerns of workers, environmentalists, and average citizens. But that allegiance is a major reason why he has been elected repeatedly as a Democrat despite representing a very conservative state. He’s had the financial and political support of monied interests. Those interests can shift their support to Bob Kerrey without disrupting existing relationships. But they might be inclined to go over to Bruning, since the GOP is more reliable about doing their bidding. If, on the other hand, Stenberg prevails in the primary after his backers savage Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, I’d expect Bob Kerrey to win the support of business interests throughout the Cornhusker State.
This is shaping up a lot like the races in Delaware, Colorado, Nevada, and Alaska did in 2010. The Tea Party is threatening to lose a seat for the Republicans that they ought to win. But it’s also showing some strange divisions with the Republican coalition. I just think it’s worth watching.
I don’t find any of this particularly surprising, I think it’s all a natural consequence of the white supremacist crack-up.
I tend to think the modern GOP is made up of slightly different main pillars than you do, I guess: anti-abortion, white supremacy, and big business. And within big business, there are two different flavors: secretly (or even not so secretly) socially moderate-to-liberal rich douchebags who just want to make an easy buck on corporate welfare, and the Galtian third world fantasizers who wish the US were Honduras or China. The Koch brothers and your local Chamber of Commerce aren’t quite the same animal.
I think what you’re describing here is a simple alliance between the Galtian pillagers and the white supremacists. The Galtians have always wanted to neuter government for their own financial purposes, and white supremacists have joined the cause with unprecedented fervor on their part, no doubt because of the racial identity of the President and what that represents. The Republicans always want to “CUT GUBMINT SPENDING NOW!” whenever Democrats are in power, but I don’t think the Tea Party and its apocalyptic tenor would have been successful under a white president.
I don’t know how surprised we should be. It’s more interesting for its potential consequences. I’d remind you, for starters, that Wall Street is still nursing some substantial butthurt over Obama calling them “fat-cats” several years after the fact. Their fee-fees were hurt by some hot rhetoric more than by Obama saving their asses and competently managing their recovery as mega-billion in profit concerns.
When a significant segment of the GOP begins attacking them as welfare queens, their reaction is likely to be a bit more thin-skinned than is warranted by the circumstances.
More to the point, if the GOP wants to act like this, then the Dems will continue to control seats in places like Nebraska and North Dakota and, perhaps, even Arkansas, where they really don’t fit the cultural outlook of the electorate.
Or, to put it another way, the Dems will hold the political spectrum from Bernie Sanders to Monsanto, and beyond.
Big business can live with Obama and the modern Democratic Party. They would prefer Bob Dole’s Republican Party, but that isn’t on offer anymore.
That’s a trickier strategy to maintain than you’re admitting. Without filibuster reform, passing bills through that “coalition” gets you 18 months of languishing over passing a poison-pill health care reform plan written by Heritage while your party looks like it can’t get its shit together. And then the opposition pounces.
On the plus side, millions of people get insured properly. But there’s an inherent instability to the plan that can lead to some severe electoral whiplash. The voting public isn’t savvy enough to credit the liberal arm of the party for dragging the corporatists along, they just tar everybody with an out-of-touch or incompetent brush.
Six-year terms are six-year terms. In 2008, the GOP thought Hillary would be the nominee and didn’t bother running anyone against Mark Pryor in Arkansas. Pryor will be a senator until 2015 as a result. If you screw up the chance to win a Senate seat, you pay and pay and pay.
Just look at HolyJoe. Of course it’s pretty hard for our elites to be embarrassed, so who knows what the Democratic establishment was thinking when HolyJoe was campaigning with Cranky McSame.
“… the Dems will hold the political spectrum from Bernie Sanders to Monsanto.”
So what else is new? That pretty much describes the Democratic Party from the end of World War II up to today. Democrats are obviously the real conservatives (small c), we haven’t changed much in 60 years.
This reader cares a great deal about the Nebraska race. As bad as Kerrey may be, that race represents one of the widest gaps between the Democrat and the Republican in any competitive Senate race.
Great post, Boo, and I agree with JfL – it’s a race worth watching.
It’s not germane to this post, but I’d add another core Republican constituency – military contractors. Not members of the military itself – there are plenty of Dems there and plenty of Ron Paul supporters whose perspectives are completely unwelcome among mainstream Republicans. But the contractors, I’m convinced, are a major reason why Congressional R’s want to reneg on last August’s debt ceiling deal, as well as why the default Republican foreign policy is war first, everything else a distant second. And their interests overlap but are far from identical with either Wall Street or the Chamber crowd.
“Here in Pennsylvania, we see Pat Toomey as an ideologue, but mainly in the service of Wall Street and corporate America.”
Ah Sestak, too bad.
“If, on the other hand, Stenberg prevails in the primary after his backers savage Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, I’d expect Bob Kerrey to win the support of business interests throughout the Cornhusker State.”
Bob Kerrey is still trailing all the GOP guys. I don’t think they’ll back a loser.
Yes, please do continue to cover the Nebraska senate race. All interesting. I think y’all are forgetting the impact of Keystone XL – don’t know how it impacts the senate race ’til now, but it has had an impact on NE