David Barton to Primary Cornyn?

National Review is reporting that evangelical historian David Barton is considering a primary challenge to John Cornyn?

Can he take out Cornyn?

I don’t see it:

  • Barton is well known in evangelical circles, but not outside of them. Despite the endorsements of various Tea Party groups, I don’t see him playing well among fiscal conservative, business conservatives, or libertarian-leaning Republicans, and he can’t win the nomination without significant support from those groups.
  • Despite the media’s love of a good Republican primary fight, Barton has the profile of someone they would enjoy attacking a whole lot more. Imagine them dragging every “fundamentalist Dominionist” panic attack piece out of the closet.
  • Most historians, including many conservatives, have been extremely critical of Barton’s history. Greg Foster at First Things (hardly a hotbed of liberal thought), writes of a Barton piece on Locke that it “contains a number of incidental factual errors that don’t even advance his thesis, indicating that his inability to write reliable history stretches beyond ideological cheerleading and into outright incompetence.”
  • Barton strikes me as a figure that would be divisive among Republicans (much less among regular voters) for all the wrong reasons. He also strikes me as the only name floated as a possible Republican challenger to Cornyn who could actually lose to a Democrat in 2014.

    Update: A day late and a dollar short. Barton announced yesterday he’s not going to run. D’oh!

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    One Response to “David Barton to Primary Cornyn?”

    1. lelnet says:

      So…second coming of Todd Akin, then? :)

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