FreedomWorks Weighs in on the 2010 and 2012 Senate Races in Florida

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, a group affiliated with the tea party movement, penned a piece that ran late on Tuesday on the Wall Street Journals website. The piece focused on Republican Senate candidates and, citing Florida, pointed to the need for conservative candidates:

Establishment strategists have always relied on conventional thinking when it comes to voter turnout. So they embrace candidates based on shortsighted partisan political criteria, and not on long-term public policy grounds. This was the logic that saved Arlen Specter in 2004 against the insurgent Pennsylvania primary challenge of Pat Toomey. Six years later, Mr. Specter would switch parties and provide the 60th vote for Obamacare. Even then, the GOP establishment showed little remorse about, and even less interest in, Mr. Toomey. "I don't think there is anybody in the world who believes he can get elected senator there," said NRSC co-chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch.

This same logic also produced an NRSC endorsement of Republican-in-name-only Charlie Crist against Marco Rubio in Florida's 2010 Senate primary. At the time, Mr. Crist's primary accomplishment as governor was the unilateral implementation of Al Gore's radical cap-and-trade agenda.

Armey and Kibbe also looked ahead to November and maintained that U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, who is running against former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux and retired Army officer and businessman Mike McCalister for the GOP nomination to challenge Democrat incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, could help the Republicans retake the Senate:

Building on the historic successes of 2010, we have an opportunity to take control of the Senate and dramatically increase the ranks of entrepreneurial fiscal conservatives, creating a dynamic new majority within the majority. That means taking on incumbents who have abandoned their principles. It means fighting for compelling candidates in primaries, like Ted Cruz in Texas. It means winning races in key battlegrounds like Florida, where Rep. Connie Mack is emerging as the most able fiscal conservative, and Ohio.