(Chuck Muth) – The Republican Empire, led by Lord McConnell and Darth Boehner, isn’t taking primary challenges by tea party insurgents lying down, and an all-out intra-GOP war is in danger of breaking out!
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been pressuring business interests to get off the sidelines and start backing Republican incumbents who are being challenged by conservative candidates in next year’s GOP primaries – which includes McConnell himself.
Meanwhile, in the House, “Speaker John Boehner also has moved to undermine the power of the tea party.”
McConnell is especially putting the strong arm on defense contractors. In a fundraising meeting last month that just came to light, McConnell reportedly told those in attendance to step up, “mainly to teach those who are primarying incumbents that it is not helpful to run against incumbents who are champions for the (defense) industry.”
But “the effort to beat back challenges from the right goes beyond the defense industry,” the paper notes. “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have been stepping in to help business friendly Republicans aligned with the GOP leadership,” a sign that corporate interests are worried that “tea party-aligned candidates might try to eliminate tax breaks and spending favored by business.”
Yes, we can’t have Republicans opposing corporate welfare and crony capitalism now, can we?
Just to remind everyone…
The tea party movement didn’t begin with the election of Barack Obama in 2008. That’s just when it was unofficially nick-named after CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s famous rant in February 2009 over the government’s plan to refinance mortgages.
No, the tea party movement actually began to evolve in 2006, after Republicans failed to live up their fiscal conservative promises despite winning the White House and control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2004.
Indeed, conservative frustration, and outright disgust, with congressional Republicans resulted in the GOP losing control of the House AND the Senate in 2006 as conservatives opted not to vote or voted for third-party candidates.
The electoral carnage continued in 2008, with Republicans – who apparently didn’t get the message and learn their lessons in 2006 – losing a staggering eight seats in the U.S. Senate!
Oh, and by the way: Who was in charge of the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s (NRSC) campaign operations and political debacle that cycle? Why, it was former Nevada Sen. John Ensign and his *brilliant* stand-for-nothing strategist, Mike Slanker.
Fortunately for the nation, the tea party movement – augmented by Rep. Ron Paul’s rising liberty movement – became fully engage electorally in the 2010 cycle and returned Republicans to the majority in the House.
So regardless of what establishment Republicans and the media tell you, the tea party movement hasn’t hurt the GOP, it SAVED the GOP.
And one last reminder: Republicans blew the opportunity to beat Obama in 2012 despite all manner of White House failures over four year’s time. Now ask yourself, was the GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, a tea party Republican or an establishment Republican?
‘Nuff said.
