This should be good. Reading the content of two separate articles in The Washington Post makes me believe that the fracturing of the Republican Party that we saw over the last few weeks could turn into an all out civil war.
The first article concerns the Chamber of Commerce's desire to support certain pro-business Republicans in primaries with Tea Party Republicans. Among the races the Chamber of Commerce is considering getting involved in is a challenge to Representative Justin Amash. The article makes it clear that Boehner has had a cozy relationship with business interests over the years and that these powerful interests want him to remain Speaker of the House.
Boehner, who was once president of a small plastics company in Ohio, has spent much of his career burnishing the GOP’s identity as the party of business, building deep relationships since the 1990s with groups like the U.S. Chamber by providing legislative favors and easy access through countless receptions and rounds of golf.
In return, business groups have helped Boehner and his counterparts in the Senate raise millions of dollars to put Republicans in office, including the 2010 election of tea party lawmakers who have now roiled the GOP.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
These business interests are not at all happy with the Tea Party's lack of support for John Boehner and are very outspoken about it.
“I don’t know of anybody in the business community who takes the side of the Taliban minority,” said Dirk Van Dongen, longtime chief lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, who has known Boehner since the lawmaker’s first election.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The dislike of business interests of the Tea Party is matched by the Tea Party's dislike of Republicans who seem unwilling to follow The Tea Party off of the cliff. Another article describes the Tea Party's intention to target Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Thad Cochran.
“This is not all for naught,” said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. “Fighting for freedom is always the right thing to do. We will take the energy and passion and put it into watching what the House does with amnesty legislation, and then into actions for next year that will involve elections.”
“We will keep fighting,” she added. “We’re not going to go away.”
. . .
“It is invigorating, in the sense that who these people really are has become very plain,” said Roy Nicholson, chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party, noting that Cochran voted with the Senate Democratic leadership during a key moment in the budget fight. “They are not on the same side as the U.S. Constitution. They are not on the same side as the They are not on the same side as the majority of their constituents.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I am glad to see that they are targeting each other. Because every dollar that they spend in a Republican primary is a dollar that won't be spent in the general election against the Democratic candidate. And given their animosity toward each other, you can bet that a lot of those dollars will be spent on negative advertising so that whichever candidate emerges from the Republican primary, you can be assured that the Republican nominee will have already been damaged by negative advertising.