Giving the Devil his Due

Isaac Smith:

I think it's unfortunate that primary challenges are typically greeted with such disdain -- remember how shocked many pundits were at Ned Lamont daring to challenge Joe Lieberman in Connecticut? But there's no reason an incumbent has a right to his party's nomination, any more than he has a right to his office

And that's a fair point, and one that I happen to agree with. But not the point that I was trying to make.

My insinuation was that the far left looks for reasons to take on incumbents for reasons that aren't at all apparent to me. That crowd usually goes out of their way to find primary challenges. And usually those challengers either a) lose the primary or b) get clocked in the General Election. CD-4 is obviously not going to flip to R even if Gandhi were running...

Usually in Republican circles primary challengers only emerge when it is apparent that the incumbent is so far out of lockstep with the base, is incompetent, or both. I mean...what did Joe Lieberman ever do to Connecticut Democrats, Kos, and the rest of that crew?

And remember: I am the same guy who eagerly looks forward to supporting a primary challenger to John Leopold in 2010.

To address Andrew Kujan's point in the comments section:

Of course, when Republicans do come c lose to mounting a successful primary challenge, they end up losing to the Democrat.

Linc Chafee was propped up in that primary by the National Republican Senatorial Committee for reasons that I cannot even begin to fathom. Without NRSC support, I believe that Laffey would have won the primary. What made the NRSC's move unbelievably stupid was the likelihood from the get-go that Whitehouse was going to win the race, which meant resources got dumped into Rhode Island that clearly could've been more useful elsewhere....