When Did Ken Buck Become Too Moderate for Republicans?

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO)

Word coming out of Washington today is that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will be directing House committees to begin an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.  It is not clear, at this point, that they have any actual evidence of these allegations, but they will involve Biden's son Hunter's business connections (and whether or not the president or his administration had any connection to them).  Any nonpartisan person looking at this would see this is a fishing expedition, which is evident by the fact that they are simply providing allegations, not evidence (Rep. Nancy Mace has said they need the investigation to find the evidence, which is the logic of a madwoman, but I digress).  What's unusual is that Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) seems to agree with me.

Buck has been pretty pointed in his conversations about the impeachment.  He has said publicly "The time for impeachment is the time there's evidence linking President Biden - if there's evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor.  That doesn't exist right now."  He has been particularly pointed in his public criticisms of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has stated that she wants an impeachment vote before the government shutdown bill at the end of September.  Greene has retaliated by publicly complaining about Buck, and stating that he should lose his spot on the House Judiciary Committee (which will be a critically important vote if the caucus decides to pursue impeachment charges into Biden), similar to how Liz Cheney lost her post in the House leadership in part due to Greene's criticism during the last Congress.  There is even a move to, like Cheney, challenge Buck in a primary from the right.

It's clear McCarthy doesn't have the votes to make a deal like Greene's, as he previously said he wouldn't open impeachment hearings unless he had a House vote, which he's now forgoing (the only logical reason for that is that he doesn't have the votes), but the preemptive attacks on Buck, to me, read as insane.  And this isn't because it's surprising, but because I've followed Buck's federal career for years, and the concept of him not being conservative enough for the modern MAGA movement...you'd have been laughed out of the room if you'd brought this up in 2014.

Buck started his runs for federal office after a controversial run as Weld County District Attorney with a Senate campaign in Colorado.  Colorado was not the blue bastion that it is today, and most assumed that appointed-Sen. Michael Bennet (D) was vulnerable.  But Buck wasn't the preferred candidate of the GOP establishment, that was Lt. Gov. Jane Norton.  Norton was basically the de facto nominee from the beginning, with a large war chest, the Colorado GOP establishment, and a considerable campaign operation at her disposal.  Buck ran an impressive grassroots operation, and leaned into some of his party's worst tendencies.  He attacked Norton over her gender (at one point saying "vote for me, I don't wear high heels") and ran as a member of the Tea Party movement.  He ended up gaining on her, and in the end won the primary, one of the biggest upsets in a cycle with a lot of upsets.

However, Buck lost the general.  He was one of several Republican opponents who beat establishment Republicans, only to watch their general election chances go up in flames from 2010-12 (the height of the GOP Tea Party movement), and Bennet was able to frame him as "too extreme" for Colorado.  Buck would run for the Senate again in 2014, but dropped out to run for the House when Rep. Cory Gardner sought the Senate seat.  Since then, he's won easy reelection.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)

For anyone who watched the 2010 cycle, it has to be said-Ken Buck was the Marjorie Taylor Greene of that cycle.  He was the one shaking up the establishment, he was the one that was giving the state party the middle finger...and in the process, he was the one who lost them a critical Senate election.  That we have gotten to the place where the party is too extreme for Buck is a real inflection point moment for the GOP.  We are now not only to the world where the Tea Party is the mainstream for Republicans...it's too moderate.

Buck's seat, it has to be said, won't go blue regardless of who wins.  This is the reddest district in Colorado (Trump won it by 18-points in 2020).  This could be a gain of another ally for the Greene wing of the GOP, but it's not going to be a chance to score for the Democrats.  They do, however, have an issue with a different Republican in Pennsylvania.  Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a more traditional moderate (he might be the most progressive member of the House GOP caucus, but he's well to the right of people like Lisa Murkowski & Susan Collins to give you some guidance of how "moderate" he is) has attracted a hardline abortion opponent, Matt Houck, in Pennsylvania's 1st congressional district.  Fitzpatrick has leadership support, though Houck comes from the Greene wing of the party.  This is because Fitzpatrick is a unicorn-he represents a Biden-won district (the president took the district by just under 5-points), and if Houck won it, it would be tantamount to giving the Democrats a free pickup.  Buck's potential challenger won't do to the GOP what Buck did to them in 2010, but Houck definitely would.

This is in stark contrast to House Democrats.  There's little indication at this point that any House Democratic incumbent is facing a particularly tough primary race (the closest you get would maybe be Rep. Danny Davis in Illinois), and even some candidates who were definitely getting clucks from the left over the past year (Dean Phillips of Minnesota, Jimmy Gomez of California, and Ed Case of Hawaii come to mind) look safe for now.  Democrats are lining up quickly behind their incumbents in seats similar to Fitzpatrick's; candidates like Mary Peltola, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, & Jared Golden, all in Trump-won districts, have been given wide berths by Dem leadership to take the votes they need to, and are 100% supported by the DCCC.  In the battle for the majority in 2024, it's clear which side is focused on the general election vs. the primaries...even if those primary challenges would've felt insane a decade ago.