Politics
Republicans and grass-roots
organizations are at odds over electability for upcoming elections.
ROVE MCCAIN Takes On the Tea Party The GOP R BY DAVID A. PATTEN
epublican leaders spent four long years trying to make nice with the grass- roots conservative move-
ment, but now it appears they are taking the gloves off . When super PAC maven Karl
Rove announced in February that the American Crossroads organization he co-founded would support only the “most electable” conservatives in 2014, it fanned fears the “architect” of former President George W. Bush’s campaigns intends to rile grass-roots con- servatives. Former House
Speaker Newt Gin- grich reacted sharply. He wrote in Human Events that Rove’s plan to infl uence primary outcomes “should be repugnant to every conser- vative and every Republican.” Rove, in turn, protested that he
“We are a threat to their power.”
grass-roots darling Sen. Rand Paul successfully fi libustered the Senate to force the Obama administration to reject using domestic drone attacks to kill American citizens. Paul spoke passionately on the matter for almost 13 hours. His modern day Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment attracted intense media attention and briefl y ranked as the No. 1 global twitter topic. But it also drew heavy fi re from the GOP’s for- eign-interventionist wing, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Sen. Lind- sey Graham of South Carolina, and Weekly Standard Editor Wil- liam Kristol. On Fox News,
— Amy Kremer Tea Party Express chairwoman
McCain called Paul’s concerns “an impos- sible scenario.” Kris-
tol mocked the junior senator from Kentucky as a spokesman for the GOP’s “Code Pink faction.” Tea party leaders see a larger sig-
was just trying to nominate electable Republicans regardless of their ideolo- gies. It turned out the Rove-Gingrich tiff was just round one in the struggle between the GOP establishment and its grass-roots leaders. Round two broke out just a few weeks later, after
38 NEWSMAX | MAY 2013
nifi cance in the attack by mainstream Republicans: They show grass-roots conservatives are winning their battle to take back the GOP, they say. “We are a threat to their power,”
says Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer.
Kremer tells Newsmax that lim- ited-government conservatives are “electing people to the United States Senate who are willing to buck the sys- tem, and not fall in line in the way it’s always been.” Ryan Hecker, the Contract With
America founder who also serves as FreedomWorks chief operating offi - cer, says it is no accident Republican senators appear to be adopting more conservative positions these days. “Establishment Republicans, after
fi ghting so hard tooth-and-nail against it, are going to have to join the move- ment,” he predicts. But he anticipates a “vicious fi ght” with entrenched party forces before that new era emerges. How the internecine warfare will
aff ect GOP fortunes in 2014 remains to be seen, but not everyone thinks it will hurt. University of Virginia Center for Politics chief Larry Sabato says the competition could actually help the party elect better candidates — as long as the factions unite behind the win- ning standard-bearer in time for the general election. “No party can win by attacking its
own base,” Sabato says. “But there’s nothing wrong in stimulating primary competition.”
Bryan Kirk contributed to this report. PAUL GINGRICH
AP IMAGES / KREMER/LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS/LANDOV
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