http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ ... story.htmlBusiness groups stand by Boehner, plot against tea party
Despite presiding over a chamber that nearly drove the country to a debt default, John A. Boehner still has the enduring support of a group that would have been most harmed by that event: the business community.
Rather than revisit their strategy of supporting Republicans after this week’s near-disaster, influential organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are standing behind Boehner. More important, Boehner’s friends in the business community are getting ready to take sides in a few Republican primary races against tea party candidates in Michigan, Idaho and Alabama who could cause the House speaker more trouble.
Now that the shutdown and debt-ceiling fight have exposed a rift in the Republican Party, lines are being drawn in the battle for control: On one side, there is Boehner and his circle of powerful business allies. On the other, tea party lawmakers and activist groups such as Heritage Action and the Club for Growth.
“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.
In the hallways of the country’s leading trade associations, there is talk about taking on tea party Republicans in at least three states.
The first is Michigan, where Rep. Justin Amash, who had been challenging Boehner during the debt-ceiling fight, is facing a possible challenge from a business-backed candidate. Business lobbyists also talk about funding a challenge to another tea-party-backed Republican incumbent, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio.
Another area for possible combat occurs in a special election next month in the 1st District of Alabama, where former state senator Bradley Byrne, a self-described business-oriented Republican, faces off against Dean Young, a tea party-endorsed candidate who says he’s “against homosexuals pretending that they are married.”
If some of these kamikaze types can get knocked off in primaries, it might help to stuff the guts back into some of the GOP House members who have been kotowing to the Tea party types in order to avoid a loopy primary opponent...
The ideological anarchists who drove the sorry events of the past two weeks are the real "RINOS". They don't give a shit about the success of the GOP, and the very first requirement for being a "real Republican" ought to be that you care about the fate of the Republican Party...
That seems pretty much definitional to me....
Like many long time Republicans I started off with a fairly positive attitude about the Tea party initially...
But I have now watched them cost the party control of the Senate through two election cycles with their wingnut candidates, (and in the process deny the party some real assets like Dick Lugar and Mike Castle) elect House candidates that regularly spout off with embarrassingly ignorant comments that turn off important segments of the electorate that we need to win elections, (like women, who the last time I checked represent 50% of the vote) and (in my view worst of all) made neo-isolationism a significant faction within the party.
(The whole idea behind the sequester was that it would never come into effect because the Republicans would want to avoid the draconian cuts it imposes on the Defense Department...apparently they never counted on "Republicans" who didn't give a shit about national defense....Who knew?)
And now their latest shenanigans have succeeded in driving the GOP approval rating down to the lowest level in the history of polling...
As far as I'm concerned, this latest fiasco is the last straw...
The good news is, that while they have tanked the GOP's public approval, their own is even worse; Tea Party approval is now down to 21%...(Hopefully it will go even lower)
The time has come for all of the other factions of the GOP; the Reagan Conservatives, (like your humble correspondent) the moderates, the "establishment" Republicans, the business community, etc....
All of those Republicans who believe in limited government, strong defense and pro-growth low tax policies, but who are also rational enough to understand that the only way to achieve progress on those goals, in a country divided politically down the middle is to be able to reach some sorts of agreements and compromises with those on the other other side...
To band together and stand up to these rule or ruin, know-nothing, radical randian neo-isolationist clowns...
Every establishment Republican member of Congress who finds themselves facing a primary challenge from a wingnut should be the recipient of large scale financing and independent help so they can beat back the challenge even in a low turnout primary.
And every wingnut currently in the Congress needs to be facing a primary challenge themselves from a well financed serious opponent.
It's time to stop cowering to these types and take them head on...
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