July 31, 2013 12:08 PM UTC

Pew Report: Tea Party Still Controls Republican Primaries

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

A new poll from Pew Research is bad (BAD) news for Republicans in Colorado and around the country:

Move in a more conservative or moderate direction on policy? By 54% to 40%, Republican and Republican-leaning voters want the party’s leaders to move further to the right. Not surprisingly, conservatives and those who agree with the Tea Party overwhelmingly favor moving in a more conservative direction, while moderates and liberals would like to see the party take more centrist positions. Yet the more moderate wing of the party is a minority generally, and makes up an even smaller share of the likely primary electorate. [Pols emphasis]

That's not good — not if you are a rational Republican, anyway. As we've written time and again in this space, the greatest threat facing the Republican Party continues to be the outsized influence of the Tea Party. When only the most right-wing candidate can win a Primary, the Republican moving on to a General Election is essentially fighting with one hand tied behind his or her back.

Republican Party officials are well aware of this problem, but there's not a whole hell of a lot they can do about it — particularly when the Tea Party is a collection of a bunch of different groups.

Both local and national Republican Party officials recognize the need to moderate their policy positions and try to appeal to voters other than, well, old white guys. They are correct in their read of the situation, but they can't do a damn thing about it when the Tea Party wing of the Party refuses to play along.

Check out the sobering statistics from the Pew study in the box at right. The big news, obviously, is that the Tea Party continues to exert the most influence over the Republican Primary process:

Tea Party Republicans have influence in the GOP partly because of their high level of political engagement. Overall, they make up a minority (37%) of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents nationally. Yet this group is more likely than other GOP voters to say they always vote in primary elections; as a result they make up about half of the Republican primary electorate (49%).

In Colorado, this could be good news for someone like Sen. Greg Brophy, who wants the GOP nomination to challenge incumbent Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper. Nationally, it means Democrats have a definite advantage in the 2016 race for President as it is likely that the GOP will put forth a right-wing candidate.