Well.... I'm not naive enough to think they'll listen..... but if we can piss the Republican Establishment off.....
Posted on 09/30/2013 5:46:59 AM PDT by cotton1706
There’s a new public enemy No. 1 in Senate GOP circles, and it’s not Ted Cruz.
It’s the Senate Conservatives Fund, an organization that used to prop up underdog conservative candidates but now is training its fire mainly on Republican incumbents — rather than Democrats. The group has ginned up anger on the far-right towards Republican senators for refusing to use a government shutdown threat as leverage to defund Obamacare — a campaign that has been good for its bottom line.
Since it started engaging in the defund Obamacare campaign, the group brought in the vast majority of the $3.5 million it has raised this cycle, pulling in $1.5 million in August as it unleashed a barrage of attacks on party leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn and veteran Republicans like Lamar Alexander.
That fundraising windfall has left the impression among the group’s legion of critics in the Republican establishment that the anti-GOP campaign has been more about boosting the group’s notoriety among the conservative base — rather than the common cause of electing more Republicans to the Senate.
“I think it’s completely destructive,” Cornyn, the Texas Republican and Senate minority whip, told POLITICO. “They are spending most of their money going after Republicans and making it harder for us to nominate and elect Republicans and regain the majority.”
The conservative organization is part of a tight-knit circle of third-party groups ratcheting up the GOP vs. GOP warfare that has consumed Republicans since the rise of the tea party in the 2010 midterm elections. The activists say without purist conservative lawmakers, the Republican Party implicitly supports Obama policies by working with Democrats. But GOP senators argue that the party needs to expand its tent and will occasionally need to compromise to work in a divided Washington.
“Isn’t it interesting that every dollar that is spent [attacking] good conservative Republicans … is a dollar that isn’t spent on winning the majority?” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a one-time close ally of SCF founder, former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). “If your strategy is to think that you can get 60 hard-core conservative senators in this country, I don’t think it works.”
The leader of the group, Matt Hoskins, a California-based GOP operative and former aide to DeMint, is unapologetic about his decision to target Republicans in ways rarely employed in intra-party warfare.
“The Republicans are the problem right now,” Hoskins said. “That is what is standing most immediately between us and victory in this specific policy fight. Getting Republicans to unite and to fight against funding for Obamacare is the first step. We have to win that fight first and then we can go and begin pressuring Democrats.”
Still, even some of the group’s supporters don’t endorse its tactics attacking their GOP colleagues across the airwaves.
“It’s not my style, it’s not something I do,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a leader of the defund Obamacare movement, said of the anti-Republican campaign the conservatives fund has launched. “Sometimes groups choose to do that; I don’t think that’s the most effective way for me as a senator to conduct myself so that’s not what I choose to do.”
Still, Lee and Cruz were instrumental in launching the defunding movement with conservative operatives who quietly plotted a hard-ball political strategy to pressure Republicans to back their tactics or face wrath from the party’s right wing.
During the summer, several high-profile conservative activists, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Brent Bozell of ForAmerica, Mike Needham of Heritage Action Fund and others, huddled on Capitol Hill in a closed-door meeting in Lee’s conference room, where Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) were also in attendance.
Their mission: Create a grassroots army to support defunding Obamacare, arguing that once the government begins to implement the law in October, it will be nearly impossible to turn the funding off, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Coming out of that meeting, activists began to put together an extensive ground game for August and September where DeMint, now the head of the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots and ForAmerica and others held a series of rallies and town hall meetings.
While the Senate Conservatives Fund didn’t attend the Lee meeting, it played a key role complementing the efforts, with 1.9 million of its supporters signing a petition calling on Congress to kill Obamacare funding as part of the government spending bill. And the group has launched a series of radio and television ads, including some featuring tea party favorites Cruz and Lee, along with robocalls and direct mail pieces.
The group didn’t stop there, attacking GOP senators for lacking the courage to fight a law the party collectively hates. The group dropped $340,000 in an ad buy in Kentucky where it said McConnell “refuses to lead” the fight against Obamacare.
“Obamacare starts in October, but Congress can stop its funding,” the ad said. “What’s Mitch McConnell doing? Nothing. … What good is a leader like that?”
Never again.
Surprisingly, that could work on a long term basis.
Make 'em toe the conservative line for grassroots campaign contributions.
Public interest over self-interest—our country is at stake.
A partial government shutdown would help get the government's spending in line with receipts. It sounds like a promise. The only threat will be shutting down the wrong parts which is bound to happen.
Hey Sparky, Care to explain how much good all those Millions Karl Rove dumped on RINOS in 12 did?
Thank you very much.
When GW Bush paced for about a week about whether to allow stem cell research, instead of saying, “no, next”, after we sweat and worked over the Gore race and debacle, that was IT.
That Bush came up with some wimpy compromise meant nothing, though it should have been the worst part. I could have been that there is zero therapeutic use of embryonic stem cell research.
The lack of virility of pacing around for a week was the end.
After 0/11 he was good for a few days, then he turned.
Having a bona fide lib/socialist or worse in the White House is better. At least conservatism is not falsely getting the responsibility for the mess.
The GOPe is so done.
The Wash Times is talking about Christie’s chances.
It is unbelievable that mature people cannot see what happened or don’t have the courage to write about it.
On Catholic radio this am the host says, “of course the congress is pointing fingers at each other over the looming shut down”.
The rust belt Catholics can still bring out their adoration of dems, after all the work they do for the rights of the unborn.
The republicans are going to get blamed anyway. It is those who realize this and do not care, but do their jobs anyway, who are going to come ahead.
Cornyn looks like a lukewarm man, ready to give up his whole country regardless of what it does to his former voters. But that’s not why they voted him in.
He is done.
The GOPe is over. A third party won’t be necessary, there are enough republican voters willing to get the Cornyns out
Cornyn’s web site says, this morning, “help me fight Obamacare”
They don’t know it’s over.
And they’ll have to go away. They are not going to be like the Clintons.
When Bush and Romney come out, they defend Obama.
It is over for them.
To those in the R party who are voting against America, I say, “Votes have consequences.”
Oh, and where are all the votes coming from to replace those you are throwing away with your rush to become socialists?
I believe that W is not a big fan of Cruz.
I got a letter from the GOP asking me to confirm I was a Republican.
I sent it back, saying I was CONSERVATIVE and would support conservatives from any party.
Do you know why Orin Hatch and Jeff Flake didn’t vote? vote?
Wasn’t Jeff Flake a Senate Conservatives candidate?
9/11
And my point was that Bush was trying to help those who wanted embryonic stem cell research and therapy.
It is more certain than the debunking of global warming.
It doesn’t even work.
But my religion, I its study of the Bible, finds and states that to do evil for medical cures is evil just the same.
Bush was having a problem deciding not to allow the legality of killing embryos.
That was IT. and it’s finally over, with people now willing to realize what we the people want.
The weak GOP can just go away.
This is part of the nationwide purge of RINOs. Entrenched and mediocre pseudo-liberals in the state and national parties, as well as the Republican leadership.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
In the time of Eisenhower, they were the “country club Republicans”, and they pretty much wanted the progressive agenda like the Democrats, but looked at Democrats as people they would never associate with personally, as they are uncultured and boorish. And they despised conservative Republicans even more.
Over time, they became so intellectually inbred that they even embraced asinine ideas like internationalism. And they also fully embraced was Eisenhower feared, the “military-industrial complex”, but expanded on it, so it became the “intelligence-police-military-industrial complex”, even though they allowed the “industrial” part to terribly decay.
In any event, the Tea Party has finally come about because of the incredible frustration with the RINOs, who in many ways are worse than the Democrats. The Democrats just want to push America into becoming a socialist state. But the RINOs are hell-bent on preventing the conservatives from stopping the Democrats.
Make no mistake, the RINOs hate and despise conservatives, and will always work overtime to undermine conservative ideas and ideals. Until the Republican party is rid of such saboteurs, we cannot fight the Democrats, as in any moment, without warning, we will be knifed in the back by the RINOs.
Good riddance to bad rubbish, and the sooner the better. Only when we are free of the RINO curse, can we truly knock the socialist-Democrats down to the size they deserve. And then set the torch to their stupid and destructive ideas.
Actions are what matters to voters, ACTIONS !
Call today and have your say !
Well.... I'm not naive enough to think they'll listen..... but if we can piss the Republican Establishment off.....
I think it has “pierced their minds”; they have a lot to lose and are afraid they’re gonna lose it. It’s going to be much nastier I think.
Hatch lurched wildly to the right in his last (hopefully) campaign.
On behalf of my four Grandchildren, I thank you more than you can know.
We call, email all the time;
do you know WHY Hatch and Flake didn’t vote?
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