As we approach the 2014 mid-term election, the Republican Party’s center-right business-leaning faction exchanging blows with its own Tea Party group may prove to be self-destructive. Across the nation, these factions will collide via their political groups such as Defending Main Street, which plans on amassing up to $8 million to obstruct Tea Party candidates from winning primary elections.
“We’re going to be very aggressive and we’re going to get in their faces,” says former Rep. Steve La Tourette of Ohio who runs Defending America.
Not surprisingly, joining Tourette will be George W. Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove and his copious “Conservative Victory Project,” an arm of his Crossroads Super PAC. He will be surfacing candidates and supporting the most viable conservatives that can win in a general election.
Rove and other establishment Republicans believe a takeover by Tea Party candidates will make vulnerable the Republican’s command in the House and may hurt their chances to seize control in the Senate.
Tea Party combatants will not be sitting on the sidelines while the Wall Street Republicans fight on. They will be bolstered by groups such as Club for Growth, a Tea Party political action group that has supported Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah. In Idaho, they threw their support for Brian Smith, a Tea Party candidate in opposition to Rep. Mike Simpson for backing the $700 million Wall Street bailout and his continued support for debt ceiling increases.
Ron Jesmer, former Executive Director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, remarked, “This conflict could be the new normal… Until we have a nominee people can rally around in 2016, I think we’re going to be the wilderness for a while.”