WRS is happy to post a guest post by Field Strategist Amelia T. Chasse.

Last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted that the Tea Party movement would “die out� in the near future. Graham is probably keeping his fingers crossed that his prediction becomes reality before his 2012 re-election campaign, as the strength of Tea Party is creating difficulties for incumbents and political insiders like the South Carolina Senator. Take Graham’s close friend and Senate ally, John McCain, for example. Two years ago, the perennially popular Arizona Senator was the Republican nominee for President. Now, McCain is facing a difficult primary challenge in the form of Tea Party-backed J.D. Hayworth, who as been able to energize the state’s increasingly conservative base and successfully portray McCain as a spineless moderate.

Voters won’t decide McCain’s fate until August 24th, but the 2010 primary season has already seen its share of upset losses for political insiders. In April, Florida Governor Charlie Crist announced his withdrawal from the state’s Republican Senate primary to run as an Independent. The moderate Governor faced an almost certain loss to Tea Party-backed Marco Rubio, so he chose to opt out and take his chances as a third party candidate rather than suffer a humiliating primary defeat. The trend continued in the Kentucky Senate primary in May with activist Rand Paul’s insurgent victory over Secretary of State Trey Grayson.

Those who attributed Paul’s victory to a famous father and a conservative electorate got a wake up call on June 8th, when California voters nominated businesswomen Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman over former Congressman Tom Campbell and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in the respective Senate and Gubernatorial primaries. The same day, Nevada and Maine, two states generally rife with moderate Republicans, both nominated Tea Partiers in key primaries contrary to the predictions of the most recent polls. In Nevada, activist Sharron Angle beat former State GOP Chairwoman Sue Lowden to take on Sen. Harry Reid in November, and small town Mayor Paul LePage’s insurgent, below-the-radar campaign came out on top against well-known state Senator Peter Mills and two millionaire self-funders in the Pine Tree State’s gubernatorial primary.

The next major test of this emerging pattern could be the August 10th Colorado Senate primary, where activist Ken Buck seems poised to beat former Governor Jane Norton; a recent Survey USA poll has him up by sixteen points.

Many, like Sen. Graham, chalk up the strength of the Tea Party to the anger-fueled “throw the bums out� mentality that is gripping the GOP electorate in the wake of the Obama administration’s liberal policy initiatives. While that dynamic certainly plays a major role, it does not account for the fact that insiders aren’t the only candidates being defeated en masse by Tea Partiers. Businessmen candidates, whom many analysts predicted would be strong in 2010 due to the troubled economy, are also falling short when faced with conservative activist opponents. Several of the contests mentioned above included at least one competitive candidate running on private-sector business credentials. Las Vegas businessman Danny Tarkanian finished in third place in Nevada, and Maine’s LePage also defeated well-funded businessmen Les Otten and Bruce Poliquin.

California is an interesting exception, with two pragmatic former CEOs emerging as the GOP nominees for Senate and Governor. Whitman did not have a Tea Party challenger in her race, but Fiorina took on activist Chuck DeVore, who finished third. A possible explanation is that, historically, only moderate Republicans have been able to get elected in the Golden State, leading GOP voters to be more strategic about their choices. Additionally, California’s notoriously expensive media market requires candidates to be extremely well-funded to be competitive, and both Fiorina and Whitman were able to pour millions of their own money into their primary bids, which their competitors could not match.

The lesson to be drawn from California is that the Tea Party draws its strength from right-wing grassroots activism and candidates who excel at retail politics, and thus is at its least effective in states that trend moderate and rely heavily on the wholesale politics of paid media. However, even in those states, the electorate is still choosing political outsiders.

With the 2010 election season about to go into full swing, these primary races provide an opportunity to take the temperature of likely voters, which aids political analysts in predicting the outcome of the races ahead, and candidates in refining their messages to appeal to the electorate. At the very least, the GOP primaries to date have made it clear that the Tea Party will play a major role in this election cycle, so pundits may want to revise their earlier assessments about the legitimacy and effectiveness of the movement, and incumbents and insider candidates may want to reconsider running on past experience, and pivot to talk about what they will do for the future.

Amelia Chasse can be reached at atchasse@gmail.com.

Below is a synopsis of Chris Wilson’s comments today on Fox News Studio B:

A BLOCK

The latest Gallup polls show amazing jump in who voters trust to handle the economy, as Obama once led this category with 19 points and now his lead is down to three, inside the margin of error. With the economy as the number one issue, Obama simply cannot afford to lose this advantage, as virtually every poll shows that voters trust McCain more on national security, foreign affairs, and the War in Iraq. If McCain can nullify the economy as an advantage for Obama, this election may turn right around.

 

The economy represents another issue where Obama is having trouble sealing the deal

The polls confirm that voters like Obama, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they trust him to lead. And they don’t dislike John McCain, while they do trust him to lead. The Democrats’ edge on the economy—which they’ve held going into virtually every election in the last forty years—gave Obama the lead before the conventions. This latest polls is just another example of how Obama gets the voters where we wants them, but can’t seal the deal and get them to vote for him.

 

The economy will help McCain in the polls that matter most—battleground states.

With Obama likely to win Iowa and New Mexico and edging McCain in Colorado, John McCain has to pick up Michigan or Pennsylvania and has to hold Ohio to win this election. In those three states in particular, unemployment is high and concerns about the economy are greatest. These are the white blue-collar workers that Hillary was so successful at pulling in during the primaries, and that Obama has belittled as “bitter�. If McCain can continue to nullify Obama on the economy, we’ll start to see these states slowly turn in McCain’s favor.

 

Sending Hillary Clinton to Florida is smart, but it won’t help Obama

Clinton has a lot of support in Florida, and it is still a swing state despite McCain’s advantage there, but ultimately she won’t attract people who are truly undecided. These people will need to hear from someone on the ticket, not a surrogate attacking McCain or promoting Obama. Moreover, Hillary Clinton campaigning is almost standard at this point. Voters have their minds made up about her, which limits her ability to reach out to soft McCain supporters or undecideds. And with the introduction of Sarah Palin to the national stage, there’s more curiosity about her and less about where Clinton stands. I don’t think it’ll have an impact one way or another.

 

B BLOCK

Democrat in the Cabinet a common tactic that nonetheless plays into McCain’s strengths

This is a standard pledge that has become commonplace in the last few administrations. George Bush put Norman Mineta in charge of the Department of Transportation when he was elected. Barack Obama has considered keeping on Robert Gates as Defense Secretary. McCain will be able to milk it for a few cycles because he has such a maverick reputation and a clear history of working across the aisle, but it really won’t turn any heads unless he picks a big-name Democrat and/or a high-profile department, like state or treasury.   Most importantly, why hasn’t Obama made the same pledge?

 

Asking his aides to make $1 a year is a gimmick, but one that voters like

I doubt anybody will make up their mind based on the pledge for McCain’s aides to make only $1 a year, but it reinforces McCain’s pet issue: government spending. It also takes away some of the ammunition from those in the Senate who are ardent earmark defenders, like Ted Stevens or Patty Murray, who view earmarks as a constituent service, by putting some of the sacrifice of reducing the price tag of government on members of the Administration itself. This is clearly a gimmick,  but it plays into the new theme that McCain has been hitting at since the GOP Convention: reform.