A few primary results from Tuesday in North Carolina and Ohio have the chattering classes all a-buzz today. Is the tea party doomed? Has the establishment learned to fight back? Eh, whatever. So long as there is money to be made on either side of that divide, the internal battles will continue. And ultimately, Stu Rothenberg is generally right:
The Republican establishment is fighting back, but winning a few primaries this year won’t do much to end the insurgency from party purists. It only takes one general election loss by an establishment candidate to reignite the fire.
But there was one item in all the results that is worth noting, and that’s John Boehner’s primary win.
The Journal gives Boehner the kind of headline incumbents facing a challenge dream about: “Boehner Posts Easy Victory in Ohio GOP Primary.”
“Easy,” in this case, means 69 percent of the vote. As the Journal notes:
Mr. Winteregg, a high school teacher who raised less than $50,000, represented Mr. Boehner’s most robust primary challenge in years, prompting the speaker to air television ads for himself. Mr. Winteregg’s campaign was aided by $350,000 in third-party spending, but it was hardly enough to give the speaker a scare.
Okay, so the Speaker wins.
And in doing so, he set a bar for the Number Two in the House leadership, Eric Cantor, to clear.
Like Boehner, Cantor has run television ads. I’m told — repeatedly — this is par for the course. But he also ran a bizarre attack ad against his underfunded challenger, David Brat, which still has me scratching my head.
Unlike Boehner’s challenger, who had a fist-full of third-party financial support, Brat has nothing. One would think, then, Cantor will have the easier time of running up his numbers than Boehner did.
The school yard pressure is now on for him to do just that. Either meet Boehner’s 69 percent or beat it. If he doesn’t, Mr. Cantor gets to be “it” in the Caucus’ next game of tag.
I’m tending toward Eric being “it.”
