Buttars made a terrible mistake last session when, in debate over a school district bill, he called the bill "a black baby ... a dark, ugly thing." He apologized. But the local chapter of the NAACP still called for his resignation. He refused and said he'd run again.

Buttars was challenged by several good GOP candidates. And a poll by the Deseret News found that most of his Senate District 10 voters didn't want him back — even most GOP voters in his district didn't want him back. But by one vote (ironically, Buttars' own, since he was an automatic delegate under GOP county rules) he got 60 percent of the delegate vote and won renomination.

Buttars, like most of the conservative Republican incumbents who defeated their intra-party challengers this spring, still must face a Democrat this November.

And while Democratic Party leaders are optimistic that they can take out some of those pro-voucher, conservative lawmakers, the reality of Utah politics points the other way.

Regardless of party affiliation, lawmakers so carefully redrew their own districts following the 2000 Census that few incumbents are ever defeated in legislative races.

In 2006, 93.75 percent of House incumbents who ran for re-election won.

Incumbent senators had a lower re-election rate — 82 percent — but that was because several incumbents were beaten in their party conventions or primaries.

So, for all the talk and bluster, party delegates this spring did not oust many legislative incumbents.

The center core, both in the Republican and Democratic parties, held.

What will happen in the 2009 Legislature — when citizens watch a number of incumbents who were called all kinds of names in the media and threatened with defeat by anti-voucher activists and other disgruntled citizens stand up and take the oath of office again?

Retribution? Revenge? Puffed up, "we survived," attitudes?

Probably not.

No, it will just be Utah GOP majority politics as usual, in one of the reddest states in the nation.

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Deseret News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com