David Vitter

In yesterday's Round-Up I mentioned that  Sen. George Voinovich has a theory about why the Republican Party has been struggling lately - too many Southerners:

Too many conservative senators like Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are to blame for the GOP's downfall, one of their retiring Republican colleagues complained Monday.

"We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns," Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told the Columbus Dispatch. "It's the southerners."

Voinovich, a native Clevelander who retires after the 2010 election, continued after the southern elements of the GOP.

"They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr,'" he said. "People hear them and say, 'These people, they're southerners. The party's being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'"

So today, one of the GOP's Southern senators decided to speak-up, touting their role in ensuring that the Republican Party remains firmly rooted in the conservative, family values that made America great.

Guess which one:

Sen. David Vitter disagreed Wednesday with criticism that Southern Republicans are ruining the party and said a return to conservative values is the best way to restore political power.

"I'm on the side of conservatives getting back to core conservative values," said Mr. Vitter, Louisiana Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "There are a lot of us from the South who hold those value, which I think the party is supposed to be about. We strayed from them in the past few years, and that's why we performed so badly in the national elections."

If "getting back to core conservative values" includes "violating the sanctity of your marriage" (and recently, it sure seems as if it does) then Vitter is the perfect man to be leading this effort.

Over the last few months, we wrote a handful of posts about how Sen. David Vitter was hard at work sealing off his right flank in an attempt to shut down any potential primary challenge he might face because of his past involvement with a prostitution ring.

Among those who considered mounting such a challenge was Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, who toyed with the idea for a while before announcing that he would not seek to unseat Vitter.

With that awkward unpleasantness behind them, Perkins can now focus on helping Vitter restore his reputation among the Religious Right, which he started doing last week by inviting Vitter onto his Washington Watch Weekly radio program to discuss ... wait for it ... HHS nominee Kathleen Sebelius's supposed "ethical problems":

On this week's edition of Washington Watch Weekly: The nomination of Governor Kathleen Sebelius for Secretary of Health and Human Services as head of the largest cabinet department should be troubling not only to pro-life Americans but to every American who cares about integrity and accountability within government. Senator David Vitter joins me to discuss her ethical problems and actions you can take to stop her nomination.

That's right - Perkins and FRC invited David Vitter on to discuss "ethical problems" ... not his, mind you, but Sebelius's.

The discussion itself was not really all that interesting, with the exception of Perkins' introduction to the segment:

Is someone whose integrity is clearly in question fit to guarantee the integrity of the largest, and some would say the most important, domestic agency of the federal government?  Well, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana joins me after the break [to discuss this question].

I guess that FRC thinks that if you are going to be discussing "someone whose integrity is clearly in question," who better to have that discussion with than someone like Vitter, whose integrity is clearly in question.

There have been several articles speculating, as far back as last year, that the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins might be considering a challenge to Louisiana Senator David Vitter stemming, in large part, from Vitter's ties to a prostitution ring.  

As such, as he looks ahead to his re-election campaign, Vitter has been working hard to seal off his right flank from any potential challenge, such as Perkins, by unleashing a flurry of legislation aimed at establishing himself as one of the Religious Right’s most committed and vocal allies on Capitol Hill.

But it looks like it might not be enough, because Politico has gotten Perkins to go on the record for the first time about his interest in possibly challenging Vitter ... and while Perkins is non-committal at the moment, he certainly sounds like someone who senses an opportunity:

Perkins tells POLITICO he just might [present a serious challenge for Vitter].

“I will say this: I have people in Louisiana encouraging me to consider it,” said Perkins, a former Louisiana legislator who joined the FRC after losing to Vitter in the 2002 Senate primary.

When Vitter’s name turned up in the phone book of “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey in 2007, Perkins said “there’s room to make a mistake and come back” — and said that even he’d vote for his friend Vitter again if Vitter could show that he had “moved on” from the scandal.

Two years later, however, Perkins says it’s still a problem for Vitter.

“I don’t think he needs to say anything else about it, but I don’t think he can do anything else about it,” Perkins said. “Can people feel a sense of trust in him to publicly stand with him and support him and help him? Maybe he has [gotten to that point]. I know I still get some questions. I think he is certainly vulnerable [to] a challenge from the right — a candidate without issues.”

While Perkins is not generally known for making the sorts of outrageous statements that plague many of his Religious Right allies, if he thinks that he’d be a “candidate without issues,” he is sorely mistaken.

For its part, the National Republican Senatorial Committee says it'll be supporting Vitter in his re-election bid, but Perkins seems to sense that he just might be able to suck up enough of the right-wing vote in the primary to knock Vitter off:   

Having spent the past five years at the vanguard of the social conservative movement, Perkins could stand between Vitter and the conservative base he needs.

Perkins wouldn’t say for certain whether he’ll enter the race. He said he could decide to stay out of it for the sake of his family.

At the same time, however, he said: “Politically, it may be an advantageous time for me to run.”

Last year, when Sen. David Vitter became linked to a prostitution ring, there was speculation that he might face a primary challenge in 2010 from the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins though, at the time, Perkins sounded more than willing to forgive and forget:

"There's room to make a mistake and come back," said Tony Perkins, an evangelical former state representative and head of the Family Research Council in Washington. Perkins, who calls Vitter a personal friend, said he would vote for the senator if he proves he has "moved on." 

A few weeks back we noted that, when the new session of Congress opened, Vitter unleashed a flurry of bills designed to ingratiate himself to religious conservatives and seal off any primary attempt to attack him from the right. 

And now, according to Bayou Buzz, Vitter was right to be concerned because Perkins has been approached by various high-level Republicans who want him to try and take Vitter out:

Secondly, Vitter is hoping to block off any potential challengers on the right. His particular concern is former Louisiana state representative Tony Perkins, who presently heads up the Family Research Council in Washington DC. Perkins ran for the U.S. Senate in 2002 as a protégé and former campaign manager of another senatorial candidate, Woody Jenkins. Perkins has built quite a conservative power base in Washington, and has become a major media spokesman for conservative family values. He has been approached by key national Republicans who feel Vitter may have an uphill fight in his reelection efforts, and some party operatives are trying to entice Perkins to come back home and take another run.