The first steps are being taken to address the issue. GOP scrambles over primaries

The disastrous 2012 election and embarrassing fiscal cliff standoff has brought forth one principal conclusion from establishment Republicans: They have a primary problem.

The intra-party contests, or threat thereof, have become the original sin that explains many of the party’s woes in the minds of GOP leaders. It’s the primaries that push their presidential nominees far to the right (see “self-deportation” and “47 percent”); produce lackluster Senate candidates (Todd Akin has almost become a one-word shorthand); and, as seen most vividly in the last two weeks, dissuade scores of gerrymandered House members from face-saving compromise while politically emasculating their speaker.


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What to do about the primaries has become Topic A in many a post-election Republican soul-searching session, and now the first steps are being taken to address the issue. For Senate Republicans, that means a modified return to their 2010 posture of openly playing in primaries. A retiring House Republican is starting a super PAC to help House members challenged from the right. And an RNC commission is mulling over changes to the party’s presidential primary.

In the Senate, where at least five GOP losses in the past two election cycles could be attributed to primaries, Republican leaders are planning to intervene in selected 2014 races to ensure preferred candidates win the nomination.

High-profile Senate Republicans are going to try to pre-empt bloody primaries with aggressive, early recruitment and support — effectively trying to clear fields.

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“Instead of worrying about resolving a contested primary and upsetting a lot of folks on both sides … you recruit the best candidate on the front end,” explained Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio.), a newly named NRSC vice chairman and close ally of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell.

Further, expect Senate Republicans to insert themselves in those 2014 primaries when Democrats attempt to influence the GOP nominating process as they did in the 2012 Missouri Republican contest that produced Akin.

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“If you catch wind of (Democrats playing in Republican primaries), it’s a tough decision but you’ve got to have the ability and flexibility to say, ‘OK guys, we’re headed down a track here, so is there a better candidate who has more appeal, can raise more money, is more representative of the state they’re in?’” said Portman.

Added Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire: “When they are up to those things, then I think that the committee has to say there are some primaries that we will get involved in because we’re not going to let the Democrats pick our nominees.”

Further, top Senate Republicans have made clear to outside groups that they’d like the third parties to not exist simply as entities that air attack ads against Democrats in general elections but to play a more hands-on role in GOP primaries.

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“It’s important for the groups that have been sitting on the sidelines in primaries and ceding the field to groups to be more involved,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “You’ve got certain groups that are very active in primaries, in many cases behind candidates that have had, as we’ve experienced in the last couple of cycles, trouble winning general elections. We’ve got to have support for candidates that can win.”

Translation into non-Senate speak: The big-money establishment Republican super PACs like American Crossroads need to serve as a counterbalance in primaries to conservative outfits such as Club for Growth and former Sen. Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund.

Crossroads, at least, is already preparing to do just that.

While they won’t become entirely invested in the business of incumbent protection — something McConnell has signaled he’d like them to do — they are moving toward a more robust presence in GOP primaries.

That means a thorough and cold-eyed assessment of which Republicans will have the best chance to win general elections

“To be effective, you have to go well before the primary and identify well-qualified candidates using a number of criteria,” said one source familiar with Crossroads’s thinking. “It’s not who’s more or less conservative, but putting together a more discriminating evaluation of candidates.”

In an interview in the Capitol, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the NRSC chairman in the past two elections and now the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, said, “I think you’re going to see more people involved in primaries,” right as he rounded a corner and nearly ran into Crossroads CEO Steven Law.

“Speaking of the devil and he appears,” joked Cornyn. “He said what’s going to happen in the primary process and I said well I think you’re going to see more people get involved. “

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Law, on cue. “More people are going to get involved.”

After Law departed, Cornyn said he was confident it wouldn’t just be Crossroads wading in.

“This is too important to leave to any one organization,” said the Texan. “You’re going to see other super PACs getting involved.”

The case of Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) makes clear that they’ll be needed.

Just hours after Capito announced in November that she would run for the Senate in 2014, the Club for Growth panned her candidacy with a scathing statement.

With one press release, the conservative group offered a vivid reminder about why the establishment’s attempt to take hold of the primary process won’t come without some blood on the floor.

Portman hopes that Capito’s early move and the support she received will send a message.

“I endorsed her, others stepped up, we’ve encouraged her to run for years,” said the Ohioan, adding: “That avoids the problem. You try to prevent the problem.”

Ayotte, making the case for the party to play on a “case-by-case” basis in primaries, said Capito is “a prime example” of where Republicans should rally early.

“When we see a candidate like her, people need to know many of us stand by her,” said Ayotte.

But, and this is the challenge for the establishment crowd, such early support doesn’t necessarily mean other potential aspirants will stay away.

For example, one senior Republican who was heartened by Capito’s decision was just as quickly dispirited upon chatting with West Virginia Rep. David McKinley a few days after her announcement. Questioning whether Capito has the fire to run statewide — she has been wooed for years to make a Senate bid — McKinley said he would consider making a go at the seat currently held by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, according to this Republican.

In the House, look no further than the Plan B debacle and the 151 Republican “no” votes on the final compromise to understand how primaries have become the chief political threat in a GOP caucus in which more than half the members faced nominal general election opposition this year.

As Speaker John Boehner put it last month when explaining why he couldn’t bring his fiscal cliff bill to the floor: “We had a number of our members who just really didn’t want to be perceived as having raised taxes.”

Some senior House Republicans scoff at such fear.

“If you can’t win your primary by securing tax cuts for 90 percent of your constituents, you’re not a very good politician,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), an early advocate for compromise on the fiscal cliff. “I would beat somebody to death if they tried to run against me on this issue.”

But taxes have become so sacred an issue to Republicans since the 1990 rate-raising budget deal that a sizable majority of GOP members of Congress proved earlier this week their willingness to let taxes go up across the board than have to cast a recorded vote for higher rates on any income level.

“A lot of the Republican Conference strategy has been to not put members in a difficult primary situation and that makes it tougher for us to sign off on a deal,” lamented former Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), a Boehner ally.

LaTourette wants to make it easier for those GOP congressmen who are willing to work toward a grand bargain and is leaving Congress to do just that.

He’s taking over the Republican Main Street Partnership — the slimmed-down group of congressional GOP centrists — and is going to create a super PAC to serve as a counterbalance to the Club for Growth in House Republican primaries.

“When a center-right Republican is in a primary and is being targeted by some group as a RINO, we’re going to make sure we have their back,” said LaTourette. “Not just with speeches and press releases but with money.”

LaTourette said his initial goal for the group’s super PAC would be to raise $10 million and he had already gotten favorable responses when he brought up his plan with senior House Republicans on committees that make it easy to raise money.

“We’re going to hit the road [to raise money] as soon as I’m off this payroll,” he said of his congressional tenure.

As for the NRCC, incoming Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), another Boehner ally who backed the cliff deal, said the group would most likely continue its policy of staying out of contested primaries but did note that the House campaign arm is an “incumbent-driven organization” that wants to ensure its incumbents “are as strong as they can be.”

And by way of subtle warning to his fellow backers of the compromise, Walden said advance preparation was key for any incumbent worried about being primaried.

“The textbook case is Upton,” said Walden, alluding to Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the center-right chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee who took steps to protect his right flank well before a long-anticipated primary he won easily last year.

On the presidential level, the prolonged and debate-a-week 2012 GOP primary has become central to Republican post-mortems about how Mitt Romney was so soundly defeated.

A session devoted to the primary at Harvard’s quadrennial post-election conclave was dominated by grumbles from Romney officials about the multitude of debates.

Stuart Stevens, Romney’s top strategist, likened the hyped-up TV forums as something close to “American Idol.”

And Romney’s political director, Rich Beeson, said in an interview for POLITICO’s ebook on the election that the primary, which stretched until mid-April partly because of the proportional distribution of delegates, cost the Republican nominee precious time in setting up his general election operation.

“It was probably worth 350,000 votes,” said Beeson.

A committee tasked by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus with assessing what went wrong in 2012 and how the GOP can rebound will consider changing the 2016 primary back to a winner-take-all format. But such a proposal is likely to run into serious resistance from RNC members who hail from states whose primaries and caucuses have typically taken place long after the nomination has been decided.

What’s more likely, according to one committee member, is an effort to take control of the debates, by which the RNC would have more say over the number and format of the forums.

“[There’s a] clear appetite to change the primary debate structure,” said Henry Barbour, a top Priebus ally. “[There were] too many and too much control with the media.”