The 2010 election season is not yet in full swing, but politics has already claimed its first casualty.
Over the weekend, delegates of the Utah GOP convention voted to bar 76-year-old Republican Sen. Bob Bennett from seeking a fourth term and ousted him from office. It was a stunning defeat for the once popular three-term incumbent who fell victim to a growing conservative movement within his own party. Bennett’s failure to make it into the Utah GOP primary let alone win his party’s nomination makes him the first congressional incumbent to be kicked out of office this year, which illustrates the difficult challenges ahead for candidates in most of the upcoming 2010 elections.
“The political atmosphere obviously has been toxic and it’s very clear that some of the votes that I have cast have added to the toxic environment,” an emotional Bennett told reporters while choking back tears. “Looking back on them, with one or two very minor exceptions, I wouldn’t have cast any of them any differently even if I had known at the time they were going to cost me my career.”
In response to Bennet’s defeat, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine said: “Today the Tea Party strengthened its hold on the Republican Party by ousting Utah’s Senator Bob Bennett from the primary. That the Tea Party would consider Bob Bennett – one of the most conservative members of the U.S. Senate – too liberal, just goes to show how extreme the Tea Party is. This is just the latest battle in the corrosive Republican intra-party civil war that has resulted in the Tea Party devouring two Republicans in just as many weeks. If there was any question before, there should now be no doubt that the Republican leadership has handed the reigns to the Tea Party.”
