http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/10/24/how-fundamentalist-c-street-center-is-shaping-the-mid-term-elections/But as we head into the 2010 elections, the man of the hour is a loyal C Streeter, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). It’s DeMint who has emerged as the G.O.P.’s new kingmaker, tapping Tea Party candidates for support by the establishment. And he’s not the only fringe politician who now finds himself at the center of the coming storm. There’s also C Streeter Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), previously best known for musing on the prospect of the death penalty for abortion providers; now, Coburn is an elder statesman of the new conservatism.
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), a former C Streeter, is about to become governor of Kansas despite the opposition of an outfit comprised of both Democrats and Republicans, called the Mainstream Coalition. Almost certainly replacing him in the Senate will be current C Street resident Rep. Jerry Moran, who beat out the presumed favorite, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a C Street visitor, in the Republican primary in part thanks to big establishment endorsements from C Street brothers DeMint, Coburn, Ensign, Pickering, Rep. Tom Osborne (R-NE), and Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who moved out, most believe, in preparation for a presidential run.
“The fact that everyone that lived in the same house,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said of the endorsements, “can’t just be a coincidence.”
Sen. Inhofe is my favorite C Streeter, because he’s so candid. Inhofe doesn’t live there, but in the thick of the scandals last summers, when C Streeters were busy insisting C Street was just a place for personal spiritual solace, Inhofe piped up to declare that he held regular foreign policy meetings there. And when the Tulsa Oklahoman revealed that he’d spent at least $187,000 of taxpayer money -– not counting the cost of military transportation -– to meet with foreign heads of state on behalf of the Fellowship Foundation, the organization behind C Street, he didn’t equivocate. His mission, he declared, was to use his status as a U.S. senator –- and a Fellowship brother -– to spread “the political philosophy of Jesus, something put together by Doug.”