Should the RNC, state party committees and RSCC consider supporting primary challenges to weak incumbents?

Amidst all the recent hoopla regarding chairman Michael Steele's television gaffs, one of his more significant statements as party chairman has gotten less press than it perhaps deserves. Steele, when asked how he would punish Senators Specter, Snow and Collins for their stimulous apostasy, stated that opposing their reelection was not out of the question. Patrick has discussed this idea here with regard to troubled and gaff-prone incumbent Jim Bunning, while scandal-prone and perhaps equally trouble incumbent David Vitter dodged a minor bullet when Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, elected not to challenge him in the primary. Still, Vitter faces a potential challenge from popular Secretary of state Jay Dardenne. Meanwhile Specter, who squeaked by Pat Toomey in the 2004 primary, looks to be facing a really tough rematch in which his reelect numbers are already below 50 percent. As someone from the KeyStone state, two facts which have escaped general notice leap out at me regarding the Specter case. First, PA chairman bob Gliesen has hinted that Specter may not get the state party's backing. This is a tectonic shift in PA politics, as the state party is not only deeply establishmentarian but is represented, at it's high eschalons, with southeastern party folk very close to Specter. If even the PA committee, which has a tendency to endorse the insider and incumbent in almost every situation, is considering not backing one of the longest-serving, most well-connected and most politically vindictive incumbents in Pennsylvania history, Specter ought rightfully to be very very concerned. The second and related point is that the firm which conducted the poll in which Specter's numbers were so low is a well-known Republican polling firm respected in PAGOP circles. James Lee, of Susquehannah polling, has been the pollster of choice for PA's Republican legislators for some time now (full disclosure: I met Lee in college, all be it briefly, and was pretty impressed). Given the source, hearing James Lee say that "Specter is toast" can't be helping Arlen's digestion any.

So, in the Specter, Bunning and Vitter cases, the question becomes, would the RSCC and RNC (not to mention the state parties in PA LA and KY) be better off backing primary challenges if these three troubled incumbents were unwilling to withdraw?

First, it's worth pointing out that, in GOP circles, the idea that a retirement is preferable to even a weak and troubled incumbent is a huge paradigmatic shift. yet if we look at the case of Florida, where Mel Martinez's retirement has cleared the way for a number of potentially strong challengers, this conclusion is inescapable. Whatever his motivation, Martinez, in opening the race to a strong field and doing so early, has taken a huge target out of the Democrat's sites for 2010 and quite possibly done the party a huge service (one wonders, hypothetically, whether a Dole retirement in early 2007 might have left room for the GOP to recruit a strong candidate and hold the NC senate seat). Should Specter, Bunning and Vitter announce their retirements, the GOP would almost certainly be in a position to recruit strong challengers in each of these races. These challengers would, as fresh faces untarred by scandal in a year in which the Democrats will have a historically up-hill battle, probably stand a somewhat better chance of holding the seats than the current incumbents.

Given this, how ought the party and campaign committees, and the state paties for that matter, to view primaries. I can see two arguments, from this perspective, not to actively recruit and support primary challengers. First, primaries are expensive and, in theory, damaging to all parties involved. Second, a bruising primary challenge with a well-heeled incumbent might damage a challenger's ability in future contests.

I think both of these arguments fall short. First, with regard to primaries. While they can be damaging, they can also raise the name recognition ofthose involved. Primaries dominate the news cycle, and the winner has already been tested with a tough election battle. His or her negatives have probably gone as high as they are going to go. This may not be the case for a candidate who has been waiting in the wings, struggling to break into the news cycle and who has not faced real opposition research. Second, a strong primary challenger actually endorsed by a state party may cause an incumbent to withdraw. Fighting the state party is a hard enough task when one is the challenger, but there at least one has the outsider image working in one's favor. Not so for a troubled incumbent; how can primary voters be expected to place faith in an incumbent rejected by the party committees? As to the second argument, I think this is unlikely. If anything, a well-fought but closely-lost primary challenge is often a springboard for future electoral success.

At the very least, the RSCC, RNC and state parties should do as little as possible to help weak incumbents, and make it very public that they will not be making primary endorsements or providing primary help to these incumbents. Smart and ambitious politicians in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Louisiana would almost instantly read the tea leaves correctly. Not only secretary of state Jay Dardenne, but freshman representative Joseph Cao, who faces a very tough reelection bid, might take a shot at an unprotected Vitter. Kentucky has a few very solid prospective candidates, as Patrick has already mentioned. And with party luminaries and the state party not standing in his way, Toomey, who won election and reelection in a Democrat-leaning district and knows economic issues far better than most sitting senators, would have a solid chance of toppling Specter. These younger, fresh faces, who could stand as stark contrasts to the actions and inaction of Washington Democrats, would, in my view, be at least as likely to hold their seats as would the weak and troubled incumbents who hold them now. And such an outcome would tell members of the house and senate that the party will not bail them out when they make disastrous mistakes. Rewarding failure, after all, ought not be a Republican virtue.