DeMint moving Senate to the right

Steve Moore:

'I'd rather lose with Pat Toomey than win with Arlen Specter any day." That's South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint defending his Senate Conservatives Fund, a new PAC that has taken Washington by storm.

The fund-raising group has already helped eight underdog Reaganite candidates win Republican Senate primaries this year. In two years, the fund has raised and spent nearly $2 million from nearly 50,000 individual contributors.

Mr. DeMint's mission is to bring more Jim DeMints to the Senate—that is, people with an unfailing antagonism to big government. But his string of victories, often against establishment candidates, has many of his Republican colleagues grumbling. They say Mr. DeMint is pushing candidates through the primaries who are too far to the right to take back vulnerable seats from Democrats in November. Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott recently spoke for many in the party when he said it didn't need anymore "Jim DeMint disciples."

Over the past five years, Mr. DeMint has established himself as the pre-eminent conservative in Congress—he has a near perfect National Taxpayer Union rating—with Tom Coburn of Oklahoma a close second. As we eat lunch at Mr. DeMint's favorite restaurant in his hometown of Greenville, our conversation is often interrupted by well-wishers thrilled to see their senator in person and all with pretty much the same message: "Keep fighting those big spenders."

Mr. DeMint savors his PAC's most recent victory in Colorado, where $141,000 in radio ads and direct contributions helped Ken Buck defeat Jane Norton, the choice of Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn. Mr. DeMint grouses that Mr. Buck was never even presented to his colleagues as a "viable alternative, which seemed unfair." He adds, only half-kiddingly, that what did in Ms. Norton was that she was "endorsed by 25 Republican senators, which made her the establishment candidate." These days, that's the kiss of death.

Other victors helped by Mr. DeMint include Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mr. Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mike Lee of Utah (but only after incumbent Sen. Robert Bennett was knocked out at the Utah GOP convention). He says his goal is to raise $5 million this cycle. That's a pittance in big-money politics, but Mr. DeMint's strategic, targeted spending has flipped more races than even he thought possible.

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DeMint is getting a lot of bang for the buck and he has also shown himself to be ahead of the rest of the GOP in figuring out w3hat the voters want this election. One thing they are looking for is someone who is serious about cutting spending. In pushing these candidates he is doing the GOP a favor and giving Republicans candidates who actually reflect the mode of the voters.

His candidates will make it a lot harder for liberals to get the kind of compromise they seek to advance their agenda.