Alabama Primary Is Test Case For GOP Effort To Stop Tea Party Takeover Of Party

"Mr. Young’s voters are drawn by his declaration that homosexuality “always has been, always will be” wrong, his full backing of using a government shutdown “to stop Obamacare,” and his insistence that people “have the right to acknowledge God in schools and in the public square.”

Supporters of moderate Republican candidates worry about whose voters will turn out.

“We can have all the money in the world, but if we can’t get the center-right Republicans to the polls on Primary Day then it does not matter,” said Steve LaTourette, a former Ohio congressman who is now trying to build an $8 million “super PAC” to help support more mainstream Republicans in 2014 primaries."

The quote above from a NYT article summarizes the messages that attract Tea Party supporters in Alabama to the polls and the basic problem that establishment Republicans face.  Tea Partiers are more active in primaries than mainstream Republicans.