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Senator
Ted Cruz attends a rally in front of the World War II memorial on Oct.
13, 2013. Photographer: Mark Peterson/Redux. A battle for control of the
Republican Party has erupted as an emboldened Tea Party moved to oust
senators who voted to reopen the ...
Common Interests, Not ConfrontationNewBloomberg News
Republican War Erupts Pitting Business Groups Against Tea Party
Senator Ted Cruz attends a rally in front of the World War II memorial on Oct. 13, 2013. Photographer: Mark Peterson/Redux
A
battle for control of the Republican Party has erupted as an emboldened
Tea Party moved to oust senators who voted to reopen the government
while business groups mobilized to defeat allies of the small-government
movement.
“We are going to get engaged,” said Scott Reed, senior
political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The need is now
more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not
silliness.” The chamber spent $35.7 million on federal elections in
2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a
Washington-based group that tracks campaign spending. Meanwhile, two Washington-based groups that finance Tea Party-backed candidates said yesterday they’re supporting efforts to defeat Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, who voted this week for the measure ending the 16-day shutdown and avoiding a government debt default. Cochran, a Republican seeking a seventh term next year, faces a challenge in his party’s primary from Chris McDaniel, a state senator.
McDaniel, who announced his candidacy yesterday, “is not part of the Washington establishment and he has the courage to stand up to the big spenders in both parties,” Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, said in a statement supporting him.
Controlling Congress
Cochran is at least the seventh Republican senator to face a primary in the 2014 midterms. The intra-party contests come as Republicans seek a net pickup of six seats to regain control of the 100-member chamber that they lost in the 2006 elections. Party leaders are also working to protect their majority in the U.S. House, where they have 232 members to the Democrats’ 200.Those goals became more difficult after the Tea Party-aligned House and Senate Republicans embraced a plan tying government spending to defunding Obamacare. President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats rejected the proposal and had the power to stop it, and their partisan adversaries took the lion’s share of the blame for the impasse leading to the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.
The Republican Party’s favorability was at a record low of 28 percent in a Gallup Poll conducted Oct. 3-6. That was down 10 percentage points from the previous month and 15 points below Democrats. The Tea Party is less popular now than ever, according to a poll released Oct. 15 by the Pew Research Center. Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults have an unfavorable opinion of the movement, while 30 percent have a favorable one.
Revised Ratings
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan Washington-based group that tracks races, changed the ratings of 15 U.S. House seats yesterday, all but one in favor of the prospects for Democrats. After three vacancies are filled in the 435-member House, Democrats are expected to need a net pickup of 17 seats to win back the majority they lost in the 2010 elections.Both sides are using the Oct. 16 vote on a bipartisan agreement to reopen the government and lift the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt ceiling as a barometer for choosing their targets in next year’s elections.
In the Senate, 18 of 46 Republicans voted against the final deal. The opponents included Senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Pat Roberts of Kansas and John Cornyn of Texas, each of whom face primary contests. In the House, Republicans cast all the 144 votes opposing the accord.
Hurting Brand
“They voted ‘no’ because they understand this is a rallying cry” and that backing the agreement could be used against them, Tom Davis, a former National Republican Congressional Committee chairman and now director of federal government affairs for Deloitte Consulting, said in an interview. “This has not helped Republicans. It’s hurt the Republican brand.”To improve their odds, Tea Party leaders are fine-tuning their strategy by targeting incumbents in states where Democrats have little or no chance of winning in the general election. In 2012 and 2010, the movement nominated weak or flawed Senate candidates in Indiana, Missouri, Delaware and Nevada who were defeated in the November general elections, dashing Republicans’ chances for taking over the chamber.
That’s part of the calculation in challenging Republican Senator Lamar Alexander in Tennessee, where no Democrats hold statewide office, said Michael Leahy, a Republican activist. State Representative Joe Carr announced in August he would run against Alexander in next year’s primary.
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