Mark Kirk Shakes RINO Label To Score 33-Point Lead On GOP Challengers For Obama's Old Senate Seat

Democrats tried their hardest to paint Rep. Mark Kirk as cozying up with conservatives to win his Senate primary bid and tea partiers made him public enemy No. 1, but he appears poised to capture the Republican nomination next Tuesday.

Kirk (R-IL) holds a wide advantage leading up to the primary, with a 33-point advantage over his nearest challenger Patrick Hughes.

As we reported, the Tea Party Nation said Kirk had a "consistently liberal" record and was their "next battle" after Republican Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts last week. The group asked tea partiers to help Hughes, and sent a followup email lauding Don Lowery, a circuit court judge also seeking the nomination. The group said any help for these conservative candidates over Kirk will help them "turn back the tide of liberalism and RINOs in our midst."

Despite these efforts, Kirk still has what seems to be a commanding lead in the primary. Our TPMPolltracker average has Kirk with 44.5 percent of the vote, compared with Hughes at 4.5 percent and the others trailing farther behind.

"This race is a battle for the soul of the Republican party," Hughes said in October, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

In the most stark example, Kirk last year voted for a cap-and-trade climate change bill, a move which earned him support from environmental groups including the Sierra Club. He defended the vote - he was one of just a handful of Republicans to support the bill - as benefiting his Congressional district, but has said he now opposes it as a statewide candidate.

Kirk, once considered one of the most politically moderate members of the House from either party, last year asked for Sarah Palin to campaign for him.

NARAL Pro-Choice America once backed Kirk but now criticizes him for voting for an anti-abortion amendment to the health care bill.

Democratic operatives acknowledge Kirk is all but assured to win the primary, but are confident their candidate (that primary also is Tuesday, and state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias leads the field) will prevail.

"The damage is already done to Mark Kirk," a Democratic source told TPMDC. "It's the seventh most Democratic state in the country and he's seen as a fraud and opportunistic."

It's President Obama's former seat.

The race is noteworthy in part because it's such a different dynamic from other races where tea party-type candidates are gaining attention, and where Sen. Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund has chosen favorites all over the country. The fund never endorsed in the Illinois race despite getting involved in California, Florida and Texas. However, the ultra-conservative Club for Growth has campaigned against Kirk. Correction: The ultra-conservative Club for Growth is not taking a position in the race, though officials there make no bones about disagreeing with his policies.

In VA-05, where Republicans are facing off in a primary to pick a challenger for freshman Rep. Tom Perriello, it's debatable whether anyone has "moderate" credentials. At issue there is state Sen. Robert Hurt's vote for a $1.4 billion tax increase in 2004 under then-Gov. Mark Warner (D), and Hurt now says he regrets it and has signed an anti-tax pledge.