Which party’s primaries are poison?

These are worrisome times for Republicans, the political experts assure us.

In Nevada, the GOP primaries for U.S. Senate and governor are commanding the newsprint, airwaves and cyberspace, the candidates eagerly savaging one another on issues ranging from taxation to illegal immigration. Down the ticket on the June 8 ballot, primary contests in the Assembly and state Senate also feature Republicans sprinting to the right, eating their own.

This is pandering to the party's extreme elements, we're told, an attempt to purge so-called "moderates" from November's ballot. Conservative platitudes might win primary elections, the pundit class purrs, but they lose general elections. Independent voters will be alienated. Embattled Democrats, including the politically toxic Harry Reid, are looking better by the day.

What hogwash.

Yes, the Republican Party is in the midst of a battle for its identity. But this struggle is being waged from the bottom up, in Nevada and elsewhere.

Regular taxpayers have decided they've seen enough Republican compromising over bailouts and deficit spending at the federal level and tax increases at the state level. They are demanding that the GOP actually start trying to hold the line on government growth. They want a referendum on the party's future.

The party machinery tried mightily to discourage so many primaries, but failed miserably. State Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio supported a slate of upper chamber candidates who would stick with him in raising taxes again next year. They're opposed by a slate of GOP candidates who won't raises taxes by one dime.

In the U.S. Senate primary, Sharron Angle is chasing down the front runners with help from the Tea Party movement. In the gubernatorial race, Brian Sandoval, Mike Montandon and incumbent Jim Gibbons are agreeing more than disagreeing: reduced state spending, no tax hikes in 2011.

But a funny thing happens when Republicans run to the right: They win general elections. The recent votes in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts weren't proof enough?

Congressional Democrats aren't retiring by the limo-load because they're feeling the heat from hand-wringing, Rockefeller Republicans promising more social programs and comprehensive immigration reform. Even in districts and states considered Democratic strongholds, incumbents are being crushed in the polls by advocates of limited government and fiscal conservatism (two principles that plenty of establishment Republican incumbents, like Raggio and ousted Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, have ignored for too long).

Republicans running to the right are, quite literally, scaring them out of office.

The political fantasy that says Republican primaries are suicidal, and that conservative and libertarian Republicans won't be able to close the deal with general election voters, is born from partisan wishful thinking on the left. They say Republicans are going to lose because they want Republicans to lose.

Meanwhile, those same spinmeisters ignore that the exact opposite of their argument holds true: It's Democratic primaries that are candidate killers.

The greatest recent example of that was Connecticut's 2006 U.S. Senate election, when Ned Lamont ran to the left of incumbent Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary. Lamont, backed by the MoveOn.org crazies, won the primary, but lost the general election when Lieberman re-entered the race as an independent.

Nevada, meanwhile, provided its own lesson in the 2006 governor's race. Gibbons won the Republican primary by labeling state Sen. Bob Beers, Carson City's best budget hawk, a big spender. On the Democratic side, state Sen. Dina Titus convinced the base that she was more liberal and more committed to expanding state government than Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson. In the general election, after Gibbons practially handed the election to Titus by chasing a cocktail waitress from a bar into a parking garage, Gibbons won easily.

Wonder why there are no high-profile Democratic races on June's primary ballot? Party leaders learned their lesson from Titus in 2006. Especially in this political climate, primaries that force candidates to sprint left are a death sentence.

Can you imagine the back and forth if Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley had challenged Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid for the Democrats' gubernatorial nomination?

Rory Reid: I will raise your taxes by $2 billion so public employees can keep their jobs, their pay raises and their pensions.

Buckley: My opponent doesn't have a record of raising taxes, but I do! I raised taxes in 2003 and 2009, and I promise to raise them by $3 billion in 2011!

There is no identity crisis in the Democratic Party, no grass-roots agitation to oust far-left candidates and move to the center. Especially in Nevada, it's the party of higher taxes, Big Labor and Big Government. The Democratic Party has been able to exert top-down control over its ticket, protecting most hand-picked candidates -- like Rory Reid -- and incumbents from politically costly primaries.

And with no primary races to force them to show their cards, many Democratic candidates are -- you'll never guess -- running to the right. They're talking about cutting spending, about opposing tax increases, about healing the economy, just like they did in 2008.

After which, of course, they did just the opposite.

Insiders on the left -- in politics, academia and the press -- spend so much time around each other that they're convinced their views are the mainstream. It's why you hear so many pundits ridiculing the "radical right-wingers" holding Tea Parties and "hijacking" the GOP. It's why coverage of Arizona's new illegal immigration law overwhelmingly favors the critics shrieking "Racism!" even though the vast majority of Americans oppose amnesty, favor legal immigration and want immigration laws enforced.

They refuse to acknowledge that the people they pooh-pooh are the mainstream, and they're the fringe minority.

This is the year they learn the truth.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer.