"G.O.P. Weighs Limiting Clout of Right Wing" [View all]

[applegrove]

G.O.P. Weighs Limiting Clout of Right Wing

By JEREMY W. PETERS and JONATHAN MARTIN at the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/us/politics/gop-weighs-limiting-clout-of-right-wing.html?ref=politics&_r=0

"SNIP................................


The party leaders pushing for changes want to replace state caucuses and conventions, like the one that nominated Mr. Cuccinelli, with a more open primary system that they believe will draw a broader cross-section of Republicans and produce more moderate candidates.

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Nowhere is the debate over how to limit the influence of the party’s most hard-line activists more intense than in Utah, where in 2010 conservatives cheered as the Tea Party toppled one of the veteran Republican centrists in the Senate, Bob Bennett. The state party’s caucus and convention system helped elevate Mike Lee, a little-known lawyer who replaced Mr. Bennett.

Now Mr. Lee is a patriarch of sorts to Tea Party conservatives in Congress. Though Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was the public face of the government shutdown fight, it was Mr. Lee who largely conceived the strategy in an effort to block funding for President Obama’s health care law.

Back home, Mr. Lee is now at odds with Republican stalwarts like former Gov. Mike Leavitt, who are leading a campaign for a ballot initiative that would shift the state to a primary system where party conventions have no role in picking candidates and, instead, all Republicans can participate.



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