"... it is possible to pay a price for excessive zealotry." We've been trying to tell you RWNJs that!

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Tide may be turning against GOP fringe
By Editorial, Boston Globe, August 4, 2016

Don’t look now, but a glimmer of hope for the country and the Republican Party emerged from the results of Tuesday’s GOP primary in Kansas. A fire-breathing Tea Party zealot, Tim Huelskamp, lost to a challenger, Roger Marshall, whose message emphasized his ability to get along with others. In the heavily Republican district, in a deep-red state, Marshall is now virtually assured victory in November.

The results showed that there is a level of intransigence that Republican voters won’t tolerate, and countered the widely held belief that GOP House members only have to fear challenges from the hard right. Together with the defeat of Ted Cruz in the Republican presidential primaries, the Kansas election should send a message to establishment Republican that they can afford to be bolder in steering their party away from the brink.

Huelskamp was a member of the Freedom Caucus, the rightward fringe of House Republicans that has amassed significant clout within the party. During the government shutdown, for instance, Speaker John Boehner’s efforts to find a compromise were thwarted by Huelskamp’s allies. Too many mainstream Republicans quailed from publicly crossing the Freedom Caucus, in fear of drawing a Tea Party primary challenge, and figured that coddling the “wacko birds” to keep their majority was worth the trade-off.

To be fair, those concerns appeared well founded until recently. Eric Cantor’s defeat in a Virginia primary in 2014 showed that GOP voters were so fired up against so-called “RINOs” that they’d punish even a bona fide conservative. Antiestablishment politics got candidates like Huelskamp to Washington and put fear into Republicans who were already there.

But the tide may be turning. First, the Republican establishment, including right-wing donors, has shown a newfound willingness to fight back against right-wing extremists. And the ascendancy of Donald Trump, who shares little of the hard right’s politics but all of its rage, has seemingly scared some Republicans into understanding that indulging Tea Party paranoia for short-term electoral gain has lead to a brewing disaster for the party.

None of those insider shifts would mean anything if the broader Republican electorate didn’t follow along. But the results from Kansas suggest that perhaps they are. Local issues played a role in Marshall’s victory, too, and it’s clearly much too soon to say the Tea Party fever has broken. But as Huelskamp and Cruz have now learned, it is possible to pay a price for excessive zealotry. If Speaker Paul Ryan can defeat his primary challenger from the fringe right next week, the Republican Party should take the hint that sanity and electoral success may not be so incompatible after all.
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