The NRSC is organizing a boycott of the GOP ad firm that made this anti-McConnell ad
The Senate GOP's campaign arm
is organizing a boycott of an ad firm that works with the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), because SCF supports primary challenges against incumbent Senate Republicans—including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“We’re not going to do business with people who profit off of attacking Republicans,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the committee. “Purity for profit is a disease that threatens the Republican Party.”
The committee has conveyed the same message, privately, to 2014 Senate candidates, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee (the senatorial committee’s House counterpart), the Republican Governors Association and Mike DuHaime, the chief strategist for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, for whom Jamestown also does work.
More on the Republican civil war below the fold.
SCF's executive director Matt Hoskins returned fire, saying that the National Republican Senatorial Committee was scrambling to save McConnell, who is being challenged by tea party Republican Matt Bevin.
He’s so rattled, he has decided to declare war on the entire conservative movement, which represents the very people he needs to win re-election. This isn’t the behavior of a confident person. It’s the irrational reaction of a power-hungry bully who isn’t getting his way.
McConnell allies, meanwhile, are having none of the SCF's attacks.
“S.C.F. has been wandering around the country destroying the Republican Party like a drunk who tears up every bar they walk into,” said Josh Holmes, Mr. McConnell’s chief of staff, now detailed to the National Republican Senatorial Committee through the election. “The difference this cycle is that they strolled into Mitch McConnell’s bar and he doesn’t throw you out, he locks the door.”
What Holmes didn't add actually probably strengthens his case: Ever since Rand Paul beat McConnell's preferred candidate Trey Grayson in the Kentucky GOP's 2010 Senate nomination contest, McConnell has done pretty much everything the teapartiers have asked of him, including hiring Paul's top political advisor to run his campaign and getting out of Ted Cruz's way during the government shutdown until even tea partiers realized the shutdown needed to end.
But even though McConnell has pretty much been doing the bidding of the far right when it comes to policy, the rightwingnutosphere is interpreting the NRSC's move as an attack on the tea party. For example, the front page of Fox Nation had this headline on Monday:
GOP Establishment Goes After Tea Party
Interestingly, despite the loaded words thrown around on both sides, the NRSC's move doesn't appear to be quite as emphatic as its spokesman had suggested. Huffington Post
reports that in 2012 and 2013, several firms besides Jamestown Associates did business with both the Senate Conservatives Fund and the NRSC, but the NRSC won't say whether it's trying to cut them off.
So why would the NRSC be exclusively focused on Jamestown Associates? Simple: Because for them, this isn't about some sort of principled stand against GOP extremism. It's about protecting Mitch McConnell's behind. And it was Jamestown's ad that went after McConnell. So it's against Jamestown that McConnell wants to fight.
