Can Republicans Avoid the Next Todd Akin?

Primar­ies some­times amount to healthy com­pet­i­tion. Some­times, they’re bit­ter in­terne­cine con­flicts. But al­ways, they are risky. This year, that risk is be­ing borne by the Re­pub­lic­an Party alone.

In one of the Sen­ate land­scape’s most re­mark­able de­vel­op­ments, the Demo­crat­ic Party ap­pears primed to avoid primar­ies next year in all the battle­ground states. (It has one nasty fight in Hawaii, between Sen. Bri­an Schatz and Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, but Re­pub­lic­ans haven’t won a Sen­ate race there since 1970.) So while Re­pub­lic­ans gird them­selves for dam­aging primar­ies in Alaska, Geor­gia, Iowa, Ken­tucky, and North Car­o­lina — con­tests that will de­term­ine wheth­er the GOP can take con­trol of the Sen­ate in 2015 — Demo­crats are com­fort­ably pre­par­ing for the gen­er­al elec­tion.

The gravest dangers are the stuff of Re­pub­lic­an night­mares. These in­tra-party battles can pro­duce nom­in­ees like Todd Akin and Christine O’Don­nell, the kind of un­elect­able can­did­ates who not only lose but also em­bar­rass the party na­tion­ally. Re­pub­lic­ans run the greatest risk of such a de­bacle in Geor­gia, where Rep. Paul Broun’s fire-and-brim­stone de­nun­ci­ations ran­ging from evol­u­tion to Pres­id­ent Obama don’t dis­qual­i­fy him from win­ning the party’s mul­tic­an­did­ate primary but very well could doom him in a gen­er­al elec­tion, even in the right-lean­ing Peach State. (So far, the worst Broun has done is call evol­u­tion a “lie from the pit of hell,” but stay tuned.) Mean­while, Demo­crats have united be­hind Michelle Nunn, daugh­ter of former Sen. Sam Nunn.

Alaska Re­pub­lic­ans face a sim­il­ar di­lemma. Joe Miller, the party’s 2010 nom­in­ee, threatens to ree­m­erge while two es­tab­lish­ment-friendly can­did­ates battle each oth­er. Miller’s er­rat­ic cam­paign — one of his per­son­al se­cur­ity guards hand­cuffed a re­port­er — nearly gave the Sen­ate seat to the Demo­crats, had it not been for Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s suc­cess­ful write-in reelec­tion cam­paign. (Miller had de­feated her in the primary.)

Demo­crat­ic Sen. Mark Be­gich, like fel­low red-state Demo­crats Mark Pry­or, Mary Landrieu, and Kay Hagan, hasn’t even had a whiff of a ser­i­ous primary chal­lenger.

And it’s not only the next Todd Akin that Re­pub­lic­ans need to worry about. It’s the next Tommy Thompson, too. The pop­u­lar former Wis­con­sin gov­ernor was al­most the per­fect can­did­ate on pa­per in 2012, but be­fore fa­cing Demo­crat­ic Rep. Tammy Bald­win, he ran in a four-man primary. Thompson won, but the tough fight left him battered, broke, and vul­ner­able. “He blew all his money go­ing through the primary,” said Bri­an Schim­ming, vice chair­man of the Wis­con­sin Re­pub­lic­an Party. “So when he gets through the primary, it was like three weeks be­fore he was up on the air. [Bald­win] piled on im­me­di­ately.”

Schim­ming ad­ded, “If he hadn’t had as ugly a primary, we could have won that seat.”

Even strong gen­er­al-elec­tion can­did­ates are dis­trac­ted from their ul­ti­mate goal when sub­merged in a battle for their party’s nom­in­a­tion. Es­sen­tial tasks such as mes­saging, voter-turnout op­er­a­tions, and fun­drais­ing can all suf­fer. “When you’re fight­ing a primary like that, it is very dif­fi­cult to do nuts-and-bolts things like build­ing an op­er­a­tion for a gen­er­al elec­tion,” said Matt Canter, spokes­man for the Demo­crat­ic Sen­at­ori­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee. Such a di­lemma could af­flict the even­tu­al GOP nom­in­ee in North Car­o­lina, where state House Speak­er Thom Tillis, while not a per­fect can­did­ate, could be forced in­to a costly primary against a bat­tery of tea-party foes while Hagan raises money largely un­im­peded. The same could hap­pen in Louisi­ana, where some con­ser­vat­ives are still mulling a run des­pite GOP Rep. Bill Cas­sidy’s pres­ence in the race.

Re­pub­lic­ans lack the same sort of clear front-run­ner in Iowa, but that race of­fers its own com­plic­a­tions. Nowhere is the dif­fer­ence in ap­proaches between the parties stark­er than in the Hawkeye State, where the GOP field might ul­ti­mately run six can­did­ates deep. The nom­in­ee likely won’t be picked un­til a mid-June con­ven­tion. Demo­crats, mean­while, co­alesced be­hind Rep. Bruce Bra­ley from al­most the mo­ment Sen. Tom Har­kin an­nounced his re­tire­ment.

And in Ken­tucky, Sen­ate GOP Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell has been forced to de­fend his right flank against in­sur­gent Matt Bev­in while the op­pon­ent he should be fo­cus­ing on, Demo­crat Al­is­on Lun­der­gan Grimes, has a clear path to her party’s nom­in­a­tion. Mc­Con­nell’s chal­lenge is dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers’; for one, not even the most par­tis­an Demo­crat doubts that his polit­ic­al op­er­a­tion will be primed for a gen­er­al-elec­tion fight re­gard­less of a primary. But the po­s­i­tions he takes now — such as po­ten­tially lead­ing Con­gress in­to a gov­ern­ment shut­down — might make good primary polit­ics but come back to hurt him later.

Con­ser­vat­ives will con­tend (in an ar­gu­ment mirrored by anti­es­tab­lish­ment lib­er­als) that primar­ies are like a sports tour­na­ment that de­term­ines the best team: They help the party find the best can­did­ate. Re­cent his­tory can be read this way. Marco Ru­bio was ori­gin­ally just an un­wanted tea-party chal­lenger to Charlie Crist in Flor­ida, and some of the feck­less can­did­ates who cost the party the ma­jor­ity last year — Denny Re­hberg in Montana and Rick Berg in North Dakota — nev­er faced cred­ible op­pos­i­tion in the primary. “I think, more times than not, a primary is ac­tu­ally good for the nom­in­ee,” said Matt Hoskins, ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of the Sen­ate Con­ser­vat­ives Fund, a group that of­ten en­cour­ages chal­lenges to GOP in­cum­bents. “It forces them to sharpen their can­did­ate skills. It el­ev­ates their pro­file and of­fers a great­er op­por­tun­ity to define them­selves than if they have no op­pos­i­tion.” (Hoskins is quick to note that his group didn’t en­dorse Akin last year un­til he won the primary.)

Oth­er Re­pub­lic­ans hope the Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Sen­at­ori­al Com­mit­tee, which last year largely avoided play­ing in primar­ies, steps in to ag­gress­ively ward off po­ten­tial weak nom­in­ees such as Broun. (Said one seni­or GOP strategist not con­nec­ted to the com­mit­tee: “I think there were some mis­takes made [last year]. But I think, like any good op­er­a­tion, you learn from mis­takes, and you move for­ward.”)

That’s what the GOP might have to do. When it comes to primar­ies, few­er is not ne­ces­sar­ily bet­ter. But it sure is a lot less risky.