Sen. Jim DeMint, the Tea Party leader whose endorsement is highly coveted by GOP presidential candidates, believes the eventual nominee must adopt some of Rep. Ron Paul’s ideas in order to expand the party enough to beat President Obama this fall. While still wishing for a conservative nominee, the influential South Carolina lawmaker said it is more important to pick a winner, a position many voters agree with. “It doesn’t matter which four of the Republicans wins. If one of them wins [the White House], we can pull the country from a cliff,” he told Washington Secrets.
Promoting his new book “Now or Never, Saving America from Economic Collapse,” which he described as a rallying cry to defeat Democrats, DeMint said Paul, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have “attributes that could work.”
But he singled out Paul’s focus on individual liberty, cutting the power of the Federal Reserve and limiting government as positions the final nominee should include in his platform. “If our nominee doesn’t pick up a lot of Ron Paul’s ideas, we’re missing the boat and we’re missing a lot of people who could help us build our party,” he said. “These are not wild ideas.”
Santorum braces to be ‘Gingrich-ed’
Rick Santorum’s stunning triple victory Tuesday in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota is fast reviving Mitt Romney’s successfully harsh anti-Gingrich effort in Florida as the GOP primary campaign turns to the next big contests Feb. 28 in Arizona and Michigan.
Where in the three contests Romney didn’t spend heavily on advertising or dispatch his legion of surrogates to attack Santorum, Gingrich and Paul like he did in Florida, Romney’s team will turn up the heat on Santorum in Arizona and Michigan. “The themes will be that he is a long-time creature of Washington who’s big on earmarks,” said a Romney adviser.
Arizona is expected to be ground zero in the Santorum-Romney fight, in part because it is a conservative state and also because Romney is considered a favorite son in Michigan where his dad was once governor. And, said the Romney insider, “Arizona will set the theme for Super Tuesday,” March 6, when 11 states will hold primaries or caucuses.
Leading the Romney cause will be longtime Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was a relentless surrogate in Florida and who has blasted Santorum as an earmark hog. That could set up a clash with his 2008 vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, who has a home in Arizona and who urged voters in South Carolina to vote for Newt in order to keep the contest going.
Santorum should be in the fight, however, buoyed by support and by donations that are expected to pour in after Tuesday’s wins.
Boehner likely to keep majority
Despite their best efforts to blame House Republicans for the political stalemate in Washington, it is growing harder for Democrats to net the needed 25 seats to win back the majority and replace Speaker John Boehner with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In his latest analysis for Washington Secrets, Kyle Kondik, the House editor for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said the wave of retirements favors the GOP.
So far 35 are on the retirement list and another six have resigned. Of those, 24 are Democrats and 17 Republicans. “Ultimately, the retirements so far have hit Democrats a little bit harder than Republicans,” Kondik said. “Team Blue is weakened in a handful of districts where the exit of predominately conservative members boosts Republican chances,” he added.
At best, Democrats this year have predicted a pickup of 10-15 seats, a figure the GOP doesn’t dispute.
Paul Bedard, The Examiner’s Washington Secrets columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears each weekday in the Politics section and on washingtonexaminer.com.
