Will the GOP Establishment Declare War on the Tea Party?

It is continuing to watch the blame game in the wake of the GOP's losses in Virginia last Tuesday.  The lunatic Christofascist/Tea Party base of the Virginia GOP refuses to admit that nominating extreme candidates id the ultimate reason for their losses or that, had the Democrats had a strong gubernatorial candidate without Terry McAuliffe's perceived baggage, the losses would have been far worse.  Instead, the Bible thumpers and Tea Party crackpots are blaming the so-called GOP establishment - even though many of the most critical Tea Party organizations contributed little or no money to dream ticket of The Family Foundation theocrats.  Here are excerpts from a piece in Time:

Since Republicans lost Virginia’s gubernatorial election Nov. 5, conservative and Tea Party groups have rushed to pin the blame on the party’s establishment, which reduced its financial support in the final weeks of the race. More money, they argue, may have made the difference in Ken Cuccinelli’s close loss to Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

But many of the most vocal critics of mainstream Republicans never actually contributed to Cuccinelli’s campaign.

In an email to supporters in the days before the election, the National Organization for Marriage blasted national Republicans and warned that a Cuccinelli defeat would be used to marginalize the conservative grassroots. Yet the organization spent under $2,000 on this year’s race, according to the latest Virginia campaign finance reports.

The Tea Party Patriots, another leading grassroots conservative organization, was similarly critical of party leaders. “Because the Republican establishment cut funding to its own candidate by two thirds from the 2009 election they robbed the people of Virginia of the good governor they almost had,” Jenny Beth Martin, the group’s national coordinator, said in a statement last week.

Neither the Tea Party Patriots nor Martin appear in campaign finance records as having given to Cuccinelli. 

Rush Limbaugh said the GOP “betrayed” Cuccinelli and fellow conservative radio personality Mark Levin called it “RINO sabotage,” a derisive reference to moderates considered “Republicans in name only.” Neither man is listed as a donor in Cuccinelli’s campaign filings.  The same pattern held for other establishment critics.

Fortunately, the GOP establishment has seemingly had about enough of the Christofascist and Tea Party elements (who are largely one and the same).  Here are excerpts from a piece in the Washington Post:

Those results convinced some establishment Republicans that they need to confront the GOP’s conservative base more aggressively, both as a way to protect the candidacies of mainstream conservatives and to deflect damaging policy proposals that have limited appeal beyond far-right conservatives from advancing in Washington.

This counterinsurgency effort emerged recently after the party’s establishment spent the past three years tolerating the tea party movement on the assumption that it was a fad that would fade away.

Instead, those Republicans aligned with the tea party grew more forceful and drove a strategy that led to the partial government shutdown in October. The outside constellation of Washington-based groups that funded these arch-conservative campaigns has helped line up a historically large contingent of primary challengers to Senate incumbents in 2014.

The simmering feud between the tea party and the GOP establishment reached a boil last month when the Senate Conservatives Fund endorsed the primary opponent of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). That move unleashed a new level of vitriol from establishment figures at those outside groups, and some worry that the infighting will hurt Republicans in upcoming elections.

Hatch all but endorsed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.) for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination after Christie’s landslide reelection Tuesday in a Democratic-leaning state. Hatch lamented that the GOP might be “too stupid” and push Christie away because the governor does not embrace tea party tactics.

In recent years, the NRSC [National Republican Senatorial Committee] has stayed out of most primaries only to watch Republican chances in the general election evaporate as contentious primaries produced what they regard as less-than-desirable candidates. This time, Collins said, his group is in the “wins business” and will try to knock out some candidates if it means long-term victory.

“One of our post-election takeaways was, we need to be more involved in primaries,” said Scott Reed, political adviser to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  Byrne won narrowly, sounding what some described as a wake-up call.

“When somebody runs a campaign still saying that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, that ought to be the first clue — probably the only clue you need — that we probably ought to support the other guy,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a 12-year House veteran who won his Senate seat after a contested primary last year.

It will be sweet to watch the intra-party bloodbath continue.  The Christofascists and Tea Party are a cancer that needs to be removed from relevance in the GOP.