Super Tuesday promises predictable results, no matter who wins

It is hard to conceive of any slate of primaries early in a lengthy midterm electoral season — with no national candidates or universal issues featured — as being worthy of the moniker Super Tuesday, but with contests in Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon and Pennsylvania, this Tuesday will at least be consequential.

When it comes to the Republican primaries, poll watchers will again seek to limn results as a victory for the establishment over insurgent tea party-backed conservatives or vice versa, depending on results (perhaps). For Democrats, most races will be lucky to garner a sentence in the Wednesday morning national wrap-ups.

One exception would be Pennsylvania, where a number of high-profile Democrats are eager for the chance to take on vulnerable Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.

Corbett rode to victory on the anti-Obama wave of 2010, but his quest to balance the budget at the expense of public education and social services have hit many voters hard, encouraging Democrats like front-runners Tom Wolf and Allyson Schwartz to embrace traditional liberal positions full-on — from restoring education cuts and expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to raising the minimum wage and increasing fees on gas and oil drilling.

The Tuesday GOP race that has garnered the most attention is in Kentucky, where Senate minority leader and establishment stalwart Mitch McConnell faces a challenge from tea party favorite Matt Bevin. But the truth is, this one is all over but the shouting. A combination of Bevin gaffes and McConnell attacks have given the incumbent a lead of more than 20 percentage points in recent polls.

While the Kentucky results will likely be given the “Empire Strikes Back” label in much of the coverage, McConnell has tacked steadily to the right throughout the campaign, often echoing tea party rhetoric on climate change, immigration and the size of government.

McConnell’s moves should see him declaring victory Tuesday night, but it remains to be seen whether he can reposition himself again for the general election, where he will face a stiff challenge from Kentucky’s Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. With current polling showing the November race close — some even giving the edge to Grimes — election watchers are waiting to see if McConnell tries to tack toward the center (which in Kentucky is still well to the right of the political center in many other states) to capture undecided voters or if he continues to employ tea party themes in an attempt to consolidate and energize Bevin supporters.

A similar dynamic is at work in Georgia, where an extremely crowded field of Republicans is vying for the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss. While none of the top five contenders could really claim to be a political outsider, sitting U.S. Reps. Phil “Todd Aiken was partly right about ‘legitimate rape’” Gingery and Paul “evolution and the Big Bang theory are lies straight from the pit of hell” Broun are probably the two closest to tea partiers’ hearts — and also the two least likely to advance to what will almost certainly be a July runoff.

That leaves plurality front-runner David Perdue, a businessman and a cousin of a former Georgia governor, squaring off against either another current member of Congress, Rep. Jack Kingston, who has said kids on subsidized school lunch programs should have to sweep cafeteria floors to learn “there is no such thing as a free lunch,” or former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel,  the Susan G. Komen for the Cure vice president who had to resign after trying to get that organization to stop funding Planned Parenthood because the latter provides abortion services.

Sarah Palin has endorsed Handel, while Kingston got the thumbs-up from Fox News headliner Sean Hannity. Perdue, who made his millions as CEO of Dollar General and is considered the favorite of the GOP establishment, has the backing of former presidential candidate and pizza mogul Herman Cain.

Perdue, while staunchly conservative, has been attacked by the other Republicans in the race because the wealthy businessman let slip that government would have to raise revenue at some point — which in the Tea-O-P is as good as touching the third rail.

The received wisdom is that Handel would have the best shot in November against the likely Democratic nominee, Michelle Nunn, the daughter of former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn and a former CEO of the George H.W. Bush–affiliated Points of Light Institute. (If Handel wins her primary, in the November election she could neutralize the Democratic Party’s traditional advantage with women.)

The race for Idaho’s 2nd Congressional District is similarly billed as an establishment bellwether. There, eight-term incumbent Mike Simpson faces local tea party favorite Bryan Smith. Simpson has received very visible support from establishment backers the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and has been joined by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on the campaign trail.

The insurgent-friendly anti-tax group Club for Growth once promised to weigh in heavily in this race, but Smith has actually seen little support. Simpson is expected to hold his seat in this very Republican district.

Perhaps the most interesting battle of Super Tuesday will be one of the last decided.

In Oregon, national Republicans thought they had the perfect target in liberal Democratic incumbent Sen. Jeff Merkley, and they thought they had the perfect challenger in pediatric neurosurgeon Monica Wehby. She has been billed as not strictly anti-abortion, and she seemed to have the edge over state Rep. Jason Conger. She has enjoyed establishment support from the likes of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, but regional tea parties are split, in part because of Conger's vote in favor of Oregon's health insurance exchange, which is not only a conservative bête noir but also, in the case of the Beaver State, a complete and expensive failure.

Still, many Northwest Republicans were excited, as polls showed Wehby edging out Merkley in November.

But in recent days a series of revelations have put all that in doubt.

First came the news that Wehby's boyfriend, millionaire Andrew Miller, had funded a super PAC running ads against Conger. (Campaign finance rules prohibit explicit coordination between any candidate or campaign and super PACs — technically independent expenditure-only committees — though dividing lines are often fuzzy. Super PACs may collect unlimited donations from individuals or groups but are barred from contributing directly to a candidate.)

Then it was revealed that Miller was actually Wehby's ex-boyfriend, but this information came with the release of a police complaint filed by Miller against Wehby for stalking. A day later, a 911 recording was leaked of Miller asking for police help in getting Wehby out of his house. And most recently, it surfaced that Wehby's ex-husband had filed similar complaints years earlier.

Wehby has played down the allegations and said the fact that they've surfaced is "the cost of challenging the political status quo."

But there's another twist: Oregon is a vote-by-mail state, and with many ballots already filed, the revelations about Wehby may have come too late to change enough votes to shift the race. That leaves a potentially hobbled Wehby still the likely candidate for the November showdown with Merkley.

So would Oregon be considered an establishment win? Would Handel look more like an insurgent to the GOP than Perdue? Would any of Tuesday's winners have been considered moderates in the GOP that first sent McConnell to the Senate 30 years ago?  

The questions might have muddy or qualified answers, but that doesn't mean there isn't a trend. Tea partiers might not celebrate many of the faces they see claiming victory Tuesday night, but they should recognize much of what they hear in the victory speeches.