Posted on 10/24/2013 5:31:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Dude, they’re feeling it. The RINOs are ready to charge.
Assuming they’re successful and a bunch of tea-party incumbents get bounced from the House, it’s pretty much third-party time for grassroots conservatives, right?
From Alabama to Alaska, the center-right, business-oriented wing of the Republican Party is gearing up for a series of skirmishes that it hopes can prevent the 2014 midterm election from turning into another missed opportunity. This will not be a coordinated operation. It will be messy, ugly, and prone to backfiring. And if the comeback succeeds, it will be in fits and starts, most likely culminating in the selection of a presidential nominee in 2016.
“Hopefully we’ll go into eight to 10 races and beat the snot out of them,” said former Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio, whose new political group, Defending Main Street, aims to raise $8 million to fend off tea-party challenges against more mainstream Republican incumbents. “We’re going to be very aggressive and we’re going to get in their faces.”…
Tactics being discussed among Republican strategists, donors, and party leaders include running attack ads against tea-party candidates for Congress; overthrowing Ron Paul’s libertarian acolytes dominating the Iowa and Minnesota state parties; promoting open primaries over nominating conventions, which can produce Republican hard-liners such as Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli and shutdown-instigator Mike Lee of Utah; and countering political juggernauts Heritage Action, the Club for Growth, and FreedomWorks that target Republican incumbents who have consorted with Democrats…
“This conflict could be the new normal,” warned Rob Jesmer, former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Until we have a nominee people can rally around in 2016, I think we’re going to be the wilderness for a while.”
Political media has been filled with stories like this post-shutdown, but the establishment plan to counter-primary tea partiers is months old. News about it first started bubbling up around New Year’s, when GOPers were still licking their wounds from the Democratic rout in November. LaTourette, a longtime Boehner ally in the House who’d taken to calling his tea-party colleagues “chuckleheads” as the fiscal cliff battle raged, had just retired and taken the helm of the Republican Main Street Partnership. Among his first acts: Dropping “Republican” from the name and vowing to reach out to Blue Dog Democrats. A month later, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Super PAC announced that it was creating the Conservative Victory Fund, which was supposedly designed to make sure that only quality candidates were nominated in GOP primaries (i.e. fewer Angles and O’Donnells) but which many righties saw as part of an establishment effort to torpedo tea-party insurgents en masse, regardless of their caliber. Now, with RINOs and TPers at each others’ throats over Ted Cruz and the merits of a shutdown driven by the “defund” effort, it’s all come flooding back, replete with LaTourette scrapping for a punch-up with the right.
So here’s the question: What’s the real goal of all this? As much as these guys undoubtedly hate tea partiers, a broad-based indiscriminate assault on conservative candidates in the primaries would be poisonous for party unity ahead of 2016 — and maybe even self-defeating, as it would render a potential nominee whom they favor like Christie even more toxic to righties than he already is. Is the goal to bloody a few noses in order to teach the conservatives in Boehner’s caucus that it’s not just RINOs who can be primaried if they step too far out of line? Is it, as Rove’s group claims, an effort only to weed out the more Akin-esque right-wing candidates before they claim the nomination and end up as sitting ducks in the general? If so, why is Mike Lee suddenly hearing primary thunderclaps in Utah? I think his “defund” strategy was goofy but he’s solidly conservative, a serious legislator, and not prone to the sort of rhetorical bombthrowing that normally turns RINOs off to tea partiers. It’d be a genuine shame to lose him, no matter how ill advised “defund” was. Or is the big Rove/LaTourette/Chamber of Commerce centrist initiative here really just about muscle-flexing, to prove to grassroots righties that moderates and business interests are still very much in the driver’s seat of this coalition? If that’s the case, there’s no need to jump into eight to 10 races to prove the point. They could pick one big-name guy, on the order of Lee, and then go all out to take him down. Although maybe that gets us back to the problem of party unity in 2016: The bigger the scalp taken by centrists, the more righties will bristle and consider walking away.
One semi-silver lining here, though. Because the tea party didn’t elect its first members of Congress until 2010, no one in the Senate is at risk of an establishment primary challenge until 2016 — a presidential election year, when it would be exceedingly dangerous for either wing of the GOP to do something to fatally alienate the other. This may be why you’re seeing the centrists scramble now to take out some people in the House next year. If they defeat a few tea partiers, the wounds might heal in time for everyone to come together against Hillary two years later. If, on the other hand, they wage war against someone like Lee in 2016, the rift could be too deep to repair in time.
From Wikipedia
On Thursday, March 17, 2011 LaTourette became one of only seven Republicans who voted “NO” on a measure introduced in the US House of Representatives to strip all government funding from NPR.[2]
In a meeting with transit advocates, LaTourette disparaged fellow legislators, referring to them as “knuckledraggers that came in in the last election that hate taxes,” due to their reluctance to even consider revenue as part of a compromise to extend the debt ceiling.[3][4]
On June 28, 2012, LaTourette was one of only two Republicans (along with Scott Rigell of Virginia) who voted against a motion to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal contempt of Congress, though he did vote to bring civil charges against Holder, for his handling of the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal.[5]
I am amazed at the virulent hate for T partiers who are just traditional Americans tired of being dissed by DC.
I am sympathetic to the T party but now am going to support them and join. I have been sending donations to cnservative candidates for several years instead of Repub entities-RNC, RCC, etc.
vaudine
Akin was establishment.
That said, if they go after Tim Walberg, I'll be happy to tell them that we don't allow nationals to tell us who to vote for. We are in charge here. DC is not.
From Wiki:
On Thursday, March 17, 2011 LaTourette became one of only seven Republicans who voted “NO” on a measure introduced in the US House of Representatives to strip all government funding from NPR.
In a meeting with transit advocates, LaTourette disparaged fellow legislators, referring to them as “knuckledraggers that came in in the last election that hate taxes,” due to their reluctance to even consider revenue as part of a compromise to extend the debt ceiling
Steve. Get in my face, and you'll receive a right hand.
Oh Steve, are you cheating on your current wife with your chief of staff, like you did your previous wife? Banging any other employees?
Why would insiders in government or those entrenched in these two corrupt political parties support smaller government or less taxes?
What the hell is wrong with these people who want the Tea party involved with these bloated corrupt entrenched party’s?
Dumbo politics?
Rope a dope?
bump
Sounds like TheWon.
He also wants the same thing-Dem policies with (maybe) just a very small tweak away from the left side cliff--moderate, NO!
vaudine
Not worried. They are a bunch of pussies
And I hope you fail miserably.....YOU ARE THE PROBLEM (the RINO backing this)
I smell a RAT.
“That's nice. How about restoration of the House Republican Leadership, Mr. Cantor? You, Speaker Boehner, and Whip McCarthy are spineless and gutless. You won't fight, have no core beliefs, and cave to the Donkeys. I hope you're all retired in the coming primary with gutsy, principled conservatives and not squishes like you.”
I do not think that Kelly has that kind of demeanor. It seems that she is more of a “go with the flow” and not “rock the boat” republican. “Get in our faces” is an obama threat and any republican using it against another republican is just wrong on every level... and it isn’t even original... they are copying the enemy... but then again they are the enemy.
I knew that he was a rat bastard!
RE: Didn’t they name a mental defect after this guy?
Does he curse a lot? :)
Bump
It would be interesting to contact Steve LaTourette and see if he would accept donations from the Democratic Socialists of America. Tell him that the members want to help him beat the snot out of the TEA party.
Would he take the money?
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