I sometimes write about the Republican establishment in the form of the donor and consultant classes, but the big money donors and campaign consultants do not an electorate make (though they can influence candidates both directly and indirectly). Today, I would like to give a stylized account of certain right-leaning voters who might be sympathetic to the GOP establishment:

These voter might be small businessmen but are more likely in the salaried professions, and they lead personally decent, quiet lives. While Tea Partiers tend to see themselves as conservatives first and Republicans second, these voters consider themselves Republicans before they consider themselves conservatives – and they think of themselves as responsible bourgeoisie above all else.

These voters take their cues from the mainstream news media (not just the network news but also the NYT, Washington Post, Politico, and the local news) and the Washington-based chattering classes (with a special emphasis on the thoughts of former Republican office holders). These voters don’t entirely trust either the mainstream media or the GOP establishment. They know that the mainstream media has a liberal bias (and it sometimes deeply irritates them), and they know that the GOP establishment sometimes gets it wrong and is almost always uncreative. But they also think that right-wing talk radio hosts are a bunch of intellectual crooks and that Tea Partiers are a bunch of yahoos. By default, they end up forming impressions by applying a discount-for-bias approach to the mainstream media’s narratives and going along with whatever the Washington GOP establishment decides as the consensus.

They don’t see the populist right (especially the populist right they see portrayed in the media they consume) as a viable alternative. They want people who will govern responsibly and who will say no to the demands of the Democratic interest groups. They don’t want self-defeating radicalism. Given a choice between their caricature of a Tea Partier and an establishment Democrat, they will go with the Democrat. They don’t want Hillary Clinton, but better her than Michele Bachmann.

That doesn’t make these voters the inevitable enemies of populist conservatives. They want a candidate who gives off a sense of sobriety and expertise. Ben Sasse could appeal to these voters even though he wasn’t the first-choice of the Washington Republican establishment. Marco Rubio ran as an insurgent conservative against a moderate, establishment-backed candidate and these voters came home to him. Tea Partiers can win primaries without these voters, but a candidate that consolidates the Tea Party vote and seems acceptable to these kinds of voters almost can’t lose a nominating contest – even if the Washington Republican leadership would prefer someone else.

The challenge for a Tea Party candidate is that it is easier to get attention from both conservative broadcasters and the mainstream media by taking stands (as much rhetorical as substantive) that will drive a wedge between conservatism-first Tea Partiers and responsibility-first(as they understand responsibility) right-leaning voters. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are both Tea Party insurgents and they have picked some of the same fights. Lee has been more constructive on policy, but Cruz is much better known among both Tea Partiers and non-Tea Partiers – and that is not just because Cruz is a more dynamic speaker.