NRSC plans to take sides in primaries — but is this really such a good idea?
David Freddoso
The National Republican Senatorial Committee is going back to a policy of taking sides in primaries, we report this morning:
Senate Republicans are signaling they’re willing to box out weak GOP candidates in the 2024 primaries following a lackluster 2022 performance that ended with their minority shrinking in the upper chamber.
The example mentioned here is Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), and I imagine that the committee’s intervention will work just fine in his case. In fact, it already has helped, prompting another would-be candidate to drop out and clear the field.
But let’s not forget that this sort of thing often ends in tragedy.
In 2017, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) resigned to join the Trump administration. In the ensuing special election, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership went all-in for his appointed successor, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, against conservative challenger Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL). Republican leaders felt it was their duty to back Strange because he was the incumbent, even though he had not been elected to the position by his state’s voters.
But Strange had some serious ethics baggage, and it turned out to be enough to unravel his candidacy. In the end, a wounded and weakened Strange wound up in a runoff against the much more problematic Roy Moore (R). Moore defeated Strange and then went on to lose in the general election. As a consequence, Democrats got to occupy a Senate seat from Alabama for a couple of years, all because Republican leaders took sides for Strange where they should not have.
I understand the impulse to intervene to avoid crazy candidates who are going to lose especially after the disastrous Republican results in the 2022 Senate races. But are Republican leaders really supposed to be good judges of who qualifies as “crazy” and “unelectable?” Their track record is not necessarily impressive.