[Flash Walken]

In a last-minute move Monday evening, conservative Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, filed papers to give up his seat in the House to mount a primary challenge against Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Cornyn is a two-term incumbent and the second-ranking Republican in the Senate with strong conservative credentials. Stockman, however, said he was compelled to challenge Cornyn, the Senate Minority Whip, because the senator "betrayed" Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, by declining to back his strategy to shut down the government in October over Obamacare.

"You and I are in a foxhole fighting to save this constitutional Republic, but liberal John Cornyn is bayoneting us in the back," Stockman said in a statement on his website. "Liberal John Cornyn wakes up every morning and works to make the Senate a more liberal place. That's why I am running for the United States Senate. I have a 100% pro-gun, pro-life, conservative voting record in Congress."

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Additionally, Cornyn -- the former chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee -- is considered to be a solid conservative. His re-election campaign is already backed by Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, and he has a 94 percent rating from Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political advocacy group backed by the billionaire Koch brothers.

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Stockman, meanwhile, came under scrutiny this year for failing to disclose in federal filings all of his business affiliations. He has, however, proven to be very conservative since rejoining the House this year after first serving from 1995 to 1997.

Stockman's taken a hardline conservative position on immigration, and gun control -- in January, he threatened to impeach President Obama over his efforts to use his executive authorities to reduce gun violence. In February, just two months after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., Stockman brought musician and gun advocate Ted Nugent as his guest to attend Mr. Obama's State of the Union address.

In an interview with Texas Monthly in September, Cornyn lamented the ongoing fueds between tea party conservatives and the rest of the Republican Party.

"I don't know how we got off on this track where some people are welcome in our party and some people are not," he said. "Hence my reference to Ronald Reagan's line, 'What do you call someone who agrees with you eight times out of ten? An ally, not a twenty-percent traitor.' Well, we're at a point where you can agree with someone 98 percent of the time, but they think of you as a 2-percent traitor, which is just an impossible standard."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/far-righ...n-john-cornyn/

Stockman

After the news of the Reno letter leaked, Guns & Ammo magazine published an essay Stockmann had penned for its June issue. In it, he alleged that the Waco siege was part of a government plot to generate momentum for an assault weapons ban. "Waco was supposed to be a way for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Clinton administration to prove the need for a ban on so-called 'assault weapons,'" Stockman wrote.

Reno, he argued, should have been charged with "premeditated murder" and the cult members at David Koresh's compound had been "executed."

"These men, women and children were burned to death because they owned guns that the government did not wish them to have," he wrote. To put it in perspective, Stockman said, "The average Texan in my district owns more firearms than did the average Branch Davidian."

Although he'd sent in a draft in February, the article appeared in print immediately following the Oklahoma City bombing. "A few things could have been said a little better," he conceded afterwards. Stockman also blamed an anonymous staffer whom he said had written portions of the article.

(Not coincidentally, that May, Roll Call reported that Stockman had finished in third in a "Boss From Hell" survey of Hill staffers; five staffers left in his first four months in office, at least one out of protest over a mandatory morning prayer policy.)

A congressman for all of five months, Stockman was now everyone’s new favorite target, and he didn't do himself any favors. Next, he came under fire from the Anti-Defamation League after going on a radio show run by a pro-militia conspiracy theorist group called the Liberty Lobby. Stockman rejected the ADL's assertion that the Holocaust-denying radio show was anti-Semitic. "They said that because they talk against 'international bankers' that means they're against Jewish folks," he told Jewish Week. "I don't agree...The largest banks today are not American. I know that most of them are Japanese now."

Besides, he explained, he led by example. His own staff included "a Christian Jewish person."

Stockman also came under scrutiny from the Federal Elections Commission. Although Stockman claimed to have been inspired to run for office by Oliver North's testimony during the Iran-Contra scandal, there was another incentive he didn't talk about. An Ohio direct marketing firm called Suarez Corp., angered by Brooks' proposal to tax out-of-state direct marketing firms, had put out an ad in a local paper promising financial support for anyone who would run against him. They ultimately loaned the cash-strapped Stockman $82,000—then filed a complaint when he never repaid it; Stockman insisted he'd been given just $44,000.

But the FEC had its sights on more than just the Suarez Corp. money, though. The commission also launched an investigation into the Southeast Texas Times, a bimonthly newspaper was launched in advance of the 1994 election and disbanded shortly thereafter. Although Stockman claimed he had no connection to the newspaper, it served as a wing of the Stockman campaign; for one thing, it was published out of his house. (Stockman's campaign headquarters was his two-car garage.) The direct line for advertisers was his home phone number, the masthead was filled with Stockman campaign volunteers, the advertisers were Stockman donors, and Stockman himself asked supporters to pay $26.50 to subscribe.

Headlines of copies obtained by Roll Call included red-meat tracts such as "Servicemen Don't Want Sodomites in the Military" and "HUD Appointee is a 'Mean Lesbian.'"

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...congress-again

Hall found that when the extreme candidate won the primary, that candidate won about 11 points less in the general election. And as the ideological gap between the moderate and extremist candidates grew, so did the penalty for nominating the more extreme candidate. Even more remarkably, the electoral penalty appeared to persist for the rest of the redistricting cycle — as you might expect if a party nominated an extremist candidate, lost the general, and then had to live with an incumbent of the opposite party for years. As a consequence, there was a shift in roll-call voting too: these districts were more likely be represented by someone who tended to vote in exactly the opposite direction as the party who nominated the extremist wanted. This is how nominating an extremist can backfire.

But maybe none of this matters. After all, Texas is Texas. Pretty much any Republican has a very good chance of winning the general election in 2014. Indeed, Hall finds that this backfire effect on roll-call voting is more pronounced in competitive districts than safe districts.

Still, Hall’s research raises some red flags worth considering. The issue for the GOP isn’t so much the 2014 Texas Senate race. The issue is that, in general, the party would be better off — that is, it would control more seats and be better-positioned to steer policy — if it could discourage primary challengers in races where negative consequences are more likely. And Stockman’s example — particularly if successful — may only reinforce the desire of other conservatives in the party to mount similar challenges. When those challenges happen in states or districts that aren’t quite as red as Texas, the party may suffer, just as it has in Nevada, Delaware, Indiana, and Missouri.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...icans-in-2014/