The Republican establishment’s latest triumph over tea party activists in a Senate primary this year — Pat Roberts’ narrower-than-expected win over challenger Milton Wolf on Tuesday night — came with a big lift from party headquarters in Washington. Tea party-backed Wolf... (Associated Press) 
 
 With 79 percent of the precincts reporting, Roberts held a 48 percent to 41 percent advantage over Wolf, a radiologist and distant cousin of President Barack Obama who had argued that the incumbent wasn't conservative enough. Text Size - 
 
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 Roberts defeated Wolf, 48 percent to 41 percent; a pair of minor candidates combined for the remaining 11 percent of the vote. The stakes are too high.” 
 
 Wolf spent the campaign portraying Roberts, 78, as a creature of Washington, frequently questioning whether he truly resided in the state or merely parachuted in to fight for reelection. Wolf, a second cousin once removed of Obama, presented himself as a hard-line conservative and built his bid around an effort to undo Obamacare. His challenge to Roberts was his first run for office, and he won the backing of some conservative groups that have tried, but so far failed, to oust Senate incumbents. Two primaries in Michigan marked a turnabout from several years of widely heralded contests in which right-flank candidates have tried — sometimes successfully — to unseat Republican incumbents they perceive as not being conservative enough.
– Another big win for the GOP establishment: Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts has defeated Tea Party challenger Milton Wolf, ending what Politico calls "conservatives' last, best hope to topple an incumbent GOP senator this year." Roberts, who has been in Congress since 1981 and a senator since 1997, had a 48% to 41% lead over Wolf with 95% of precincts reporting, according to the AP. The campaign of Wolf, a radiologist and a distant cousin of President Obama, took a hit early this year when it emerged that he had posted patient X-rays on Facebook and joked about them. "Tonight, we reaffirmed what we all knew. We are Kansas-loving conservative Republicans, and we are in charge of our own future," Roberts told supporters. "My posse did not flinch, even though there were times when their candidate—me—stepped on our message." In other GOP primaries yesterday, a Tea Party congressman in eastern Michigan was defeated by a lawyer backed by business groups, while a libertarian-leaning congressman in the western part of the state defeated a business-backed challenger, the New York Times reports.