A number of Republican House members, who by their own admission are conservatives, are leaving Congress this year, only to find a new brand of even-more-conservative lawmakers anxious to take their place. Oddly enough, it seems the old guard isn’t at all happy about it.<\/p>\n
Consider Arizona’s 8th<\/a> congressional district, for example.<\/p>\n Dems pleased about facing conservative GOP nominee Randy Graf have just received more good news: Retiring 11-term GOP Rep. Jim Kolbe has just announced that he’s refusing to endorse Graf<\/a>. The backstory here is interesting: Graf ran a nasty primary against Kolbe in 2004, with observers insinuating<\/a> that Graf was tacitly using the fact that Kolbe is openly gay to whip up right wing support. In that light, Kolbe’s statement citing “profound and fundamental differences” with Graf<\/a> seems to have more resonance. Either way, Kolbe’s announcement will make life much tougher for Graf in the coming showdown with Gabrielle Giffords, who romped to the Dem nomination last night.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And also Colorado’s 5th, where Doug Lamborn won the GOP nomination to replace Rep. Joel Hefley (R). A week after the primary, Hefley announced he was so disgusted by Lamborn’s campaign, which Hefley described as “the most sleazy, dishonest campaign I’ve seen in a long, long time,” the incumbent said he could not<\/a> in good conscience endorse his would-be successor, even if that hurt the GOP.<\/p>\n And, of course, Michigan’s 7th<\/a>, where challenger Tim Walberg (R) defeated Rep. Joe Schwarz (R) in an August primary. Walberg is so right-wing, and Schwarz so concerned about the Republican purge of moderates, the incumbent is also not backing<\/a> the GOP candidate.<\/p>\n It’s unusual when departing members of Congress announce publicly that they won’t support their would-be replacements from their own party, but three? In the same year?<\/p>\n When conservative Republicans are in open revolt against really<\/i> conservative Republicans, it seems like a trend about which the GOP should be concerned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A number of Republican House members, who by their own admission are conservatives, are leaving Congress this year, only to find a new brand of even-more-conservative lawmakers anxious to take their place. Oddly enough, it seems the old guard isn’t at all happy about it. Consider Arizona’s 8th congressional district, for example. Dems pleased about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}