In Ohio, Tea Party Gives High-Profile GOPers Flopsweat

Over at HuffPo, Chris Gentilviso takes a look at the upcoming primary season in Ohio, where at least three prominent establishment Republicans are feeling “tea kettle heat” big time:

Conservative restlessness within their own party poses challenges to three Republican stars in the battleground state of Ohio, where House Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Rob Portman and Gov. John Kasich all have riled up the right.

Kasich upset some by pushing for certain tax increases and embracing Medicaid expansion under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul; Boehner is clashing with conservative groups over the federal budget; and Portman faces backlash from social conservatives over his about-face in favor of gay marriage. Whether the GOP trio can hold Republicans together has sweeping political implications, given Ohio’s role as a swing state and the three men’s own national profiles. Kasich and Portman have been floated as presidential-ticket contenders, while Boehner seeks to hang on to one of Washington’s most powerful jobs.

Some party dissidents feel betrayed, seeing an orchestrated effort to court support among the roughly 20 percent of unaffiliated voters in Ohio’s middle. Kasich could face a primary challenge in 2014 and lose some conservatives to a Libertarian candidate in November. People are lining up to oppose Boehner in the district he has held more than two decades, while there’s talk of recruiting a primary challenger for Portman in 2016.

“The Republican Party needs to know what it stands for,” said Tom Zawistowski, a leader in the Ohio tea party movement. “We’re not going to let them slide.”

Given the current volatility and uncertainty in U.S. politics, what happens with the three leaders in Ohio, often seen as a political bellwether, “could serve as a beacon of national interest,” said Barbara Trish, an associate political science professor at Iowa’s Grinnell College who studies political parties.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Democrats are watching the goings-on very closely.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.