Extremism Defeats Extremism In Utah
This afternoon, Robert Bennett still serves as U.S. Senator from Utah. By this time next year, however, he will not. Senator Bennett’s effort to gain re-election this year has been defeated – by members of his own political party. Delegates at a meeting of the Utah Republicans yesterday chose to exclude Bennett from the Utah GOP primary election in June.
As a member of the United States Senate, Robert Bennett was well known for being further to the right than most Americans. On a legislative scale in which 100 represents pure progressive political identity and -100 is as far to the right as it’s possible for a member of Congress to go, Bennett scored a -49, solidly in right wing Republican territory. Bennett dwelt on the extremes. He was, compared to his Senate colleagues, a right wing extremist.
However, Bennett was defeated by Utah Republicans who believed that he wasn’t extreme enough. The Utah Republicans decided they wanted to vote for someone who would be even more of an extremist than Bennett.
They chose two possible replacements, who will battle to become the Utah Republicans’ nominee in a few weeks. These two replacements are:
- Mike Lee, who contends, in the context of large numbers of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq that “we cannot tie the hands of our military with unnecessary rules of engagement.” Lee also, as the nation watches the Gulf of Mexico turned into an oily cesspool by the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling disaster, suggests that regulations need to be reduced and drilling increased.
- Tim Bridgewater, who opposes the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, suggesting that some babies born in the United States should not be recognized as American citizens. Bridgewater also supports S.B. 1070, an Arizona law that requires law enforcement officers to demand identification papers of people they’ve targeted because of skin color, and take the targeted people to detention camps if they aren’t carrying their birth certificates with them.
Among the Utah Republicans, extremism has defeated extremism.
