attorney named Mike Lee. Though he finished second in the convention voting, Lee went on to win the primary and the general election, later establishing himself as one of the more serious conservative voices in Congress. But the unceremonious exiling of Bennett was deeply unsettling to the GOP’s ruling class and a harbinger of the disruption to come. “The political atmosphere, obviously, has been toxic,” a weepy Bennett told the Salt Lake Tribune, “and it’s very clear some of the votes that I have cast have added to the toxic environment.”6
Less than two weeks later, in Kentucky, a libertarian Republican named Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist and the son of Ron Paul, crushed the national party’s handpicked recruit, winning the Senate primary by 23 points. It was another blow to Cornyn and the NRSC, but it was especially humiliating for McConnell, the state’s senior senator, who had been working against Paul behind the scenes. Knowing this, Paul felt a special satisfaction campaigning against the bailout vote McConnell engineered and calling for the overthrow of an establishment McConnell embodied. The result was another win for DeMint and the conservative groups that had pooled their resources behind Paul knowing full well the significance of beating McConnell in his own backyard. “I have a message from the Tea Party—a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words,” Paul declared at his victory rally. “We’ve come to take our government back!”
In reality, it barely mattered whom Republicans nominated in Utah and Kentucky. No Democrat was going to carry either of those ruby red states circa 2010. Thus, an even bigger win for the Tea Party came in Wisconsin, where liberal icon Russ Feingold was expected to cruise to a fourth term. Priebus had other ideas. In addition to serving as the RNC’s general counsel, Priebus was the Wisconsin GOP’s chairman. Skilled at uniting the intraparty factions that warred in other states, he had set out looking for someone who could excite both the Tea Party and the establishment. What he found: Ron Johnson, a self-made manufacturing baron who was gaining renown among the state’s grassroots for his rants against the advance of big government. Recruited into the race by Priebus, Johnson checked every box: He was an angry, business-minded outsider with deep pockets to fund a competitive campaign. The race turned into the biggest surprise of the election cycle: By the time the RNC bus tour pulled into Wisconsin in mid-October, Johnson was trouncing Feingold in the polls.
The mood was so jubilant that Priebus, who owned a gray suit that Steele admired, invited his local tailor onto the bus and had him measure the chairman for an identical match. After the election was won, everyone joked, Steele and Priebus would wear them on the same day and pose as twins—the towering black man and the diminutive Greek guy.
That Johnson poured $8 million of his own fortune into the Wisconsin race, and was boosted by millions more in outside money, dripped with irony. Early in 2010, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC had established that corporate political donations qualified as protected speech, inviting an unprecedented deluge of “dark money” into the midterm cycle. (Anonymous donations far predated Citizens United; in fact, the justices ruled that lawmakers have the power to regulate campaign finance disclosures, something Congress has not done.)
Republicans could ask for nothing more than the eradication of the McCain-Feingold law and its Democratic coauthor in one fell swoop. Johnson beat Feingold by 5 points.
This was the reward of the Tea Party: uncorking an energy that had simmered for decades, yielding fresh candidates who captured the mood of the electorate.
It was also the risk.
REPUBLICANS HAD HARRY REID ON THE ROPES. THE SENATE MAJORITY leader, part of the Democratic triad in Washington, was badly underwater in Nevada. Polling consistently showed a majority of voters disapproving of his performance, owing partially to tepid support from his own base: A DailyKos survey in late 2009 reported that just 58 percent of Nevada Democrats viewed him favorably.7 This, in concert with booming enthusiasm on the right, should have spelled the end for Reid, potentially altering the course of Obama’s tenure by removing the man who wielded the Senate to safeguard the president’s legacy.
Instead, Republicans nominated Sharron Angle.
A former state assemblywoman, Angle operated out of her living room with just two paid staffers, one of whom, her campaign manager, was prone to going AWOL for weeks at a time. Angle’s former statehouse colleagues whispered that