Wasserman Schultz Says Dems Will Defeat Far-Right-Wingers' Bush-Era Policies; Barbour: Voters Reject "Far to the Left" Dems
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DAVID S. MORGAN
A Democratic Congresswoman said today the potential victory of Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller and others supported by Tea Party activists as nominees for the Republican Party will pose a difficulty for the GOP going into the November election.
Miller, who is in a tight contest with the incumbent Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski following Tuesday's Republican primary, currently holds a narrow lead as absentee ballots are being counted.
Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., described the GOP primaries, and yesterday's rally in Washington led by conservative commentator Glenn Beck, as a sign that "There is a raging battle going on within the Republican Party for the heart and soul of the Republican Party."
Speaking of Tuesday's primary battle in Alaska, which follows Utah Republicans' choosing a Tea Party-backed candidate over an incumbent Senator, she said it was "hard to know where the Republican Party ends and the Tea Party begins. They've struggled to elect, and actually have not been able to successfully elect, their moderate candidates, the mainstream candidates. The Tea Party candidates seem to be winning because the Tea Party Republicans are energized in their primaries.
"I think a pretty difficult problem for them going into the November elections because they have candidates like Miller who are on the extreme right wing fringe who want to end Medicare as we know it, yank the safety net out from under our senior citizens. I mean, Americans are really going to have a very clear choice set up in November, between moderate Democrats who are centrist, where the country is, and Republicans who are really off on the right wing fringe."
Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour, also appearing on the program, dismissed Wasserman Schultz's suggestion that Republican incumbents fear a Tea Party insurgency.
As a past chairman of the Republican National Committee and current chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Barbour said, "We never took sides in primaries. We did not endorse incumbents over challengers.
"Here's why: The Republicans of Alaska have the right and should pick their nominee. They don't need somebody in Mississippi to tell them who ought to be the Senator of Alaska."
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