U.S. Chamber Threatens Tea Party — Insane but Telling

Yesterday Newsmax reported that:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is ready to take on the tea party in 2014 Senate primaries and elections with a deep-pocketed boost of establishment and business Republican candidates.

“Our No. 1 focus is to make sure, when it comes to the Senate, that we have no loser candidates,” Chamber strategist Scott Reed told The Wall Street Journal. “That will be our mantra: No fools on our ticket.” . . .

Hard-right candidates’ blunders are perceived to have cost the GOP five Senate seats in recent years, The Hill reported.

And so the likes of the people that gave us the careful but stellar winning campaigns of Mitt Romney, John McCain, regularly produce losing candidates and helped Democrats stomp on the “Tea Party” or “far right,” candidates they complain about,  are going to pave the way for victory in 2014. Of course the big question is “for what”?

Are their candidates actually going to end Obamacare or sustain it through “compromise,” essentially helping Democrats achieve its essence? Are their candidates going to genuinely pursue serious tax reform or just business as usual special considerations for big business? Are they going to help candidates who push immigration legislation that allows big business to exploit low wage labor while placing huge costs on individual tax payers?  Are their candidates going to be the ones who sustain industrial bail outs and too big to fail?

Are their candidates going to be the ones who are quite comfortable with government picking winners and losers, especially now that their boys have bellied up to the government trough?  Are they going to support any candidate who has an iota of concern over the Constitutional crisis this country is in?  Which Democrats are they going to ignore, vulnerable or not, because they are “not so bad” (deals having been cut on this or that vote)?  Never mind that those same Democrats serve to make a Harry Reid’s leadership possible, or a Nancy Pelosi’s and to sustain Obama’s leverage if not hegemony.

We think serious political observers know the answers to the questions as to where “the Chamber” and their candidates will tend to fall on the questions posed above. Some of those observers no doubt would cheer such candidates and results.

We have no doubt  certain establishment Republican geniuses, claiming to be conservatives, applaud this $50 million dollar effort to  pick a fight with the movement that produced the House changeover of 2010. Their delusional thinking is that they are the base of the Republican Party in their country club  and wannabe way.  Unfortunately they are the images that lost it for Romney, not conservatives and the Tea Party.

Today,  Newsmax posted an article in which Tea Party and conservative organizations responded to the challenge.

“It’s insane,” Cleta Mitchell, one of Washington’s most respected elections attorneys, told Newsmax. “It’s based on false assumptions . . .

Tom Borelli, senior fellow for FreedomWorks, characterized the chamber’s pledge as more of the same from an organization that regularly backs big government and big business.

“The tea party is about lowering costs,” Borelli told Newsmax. “They’ll want regulations to favor big business.”

Both Mitchell and Chocola  (Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth) pointed to such establishment Republican candidates who lost their Senate races last year as George Allen in Virginia, Rick Berg in North Dakota, Denny Rehberg in Montana, and Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin.

“That’s who they wanted — and they all lost,” Mitchell said. “The thing that I think is really crazy is to not realize is that the tea party is the grass roots. It’s really the energy. Those are the volunteers.

“They all lost because they really didn’t articulate things that Republicans say they are for,” Chocola added. “It’s always more important what the candidates believe rather than what party label they attach to their candidacy.”

Mitchell, however, raised a larger question in light of the chamber’s new effort.

“Let’s say they pick a side in the primary, and their candidate loses,” she posed. “Are they going to support the nominee?

“They always expect conservatives to support whatever centrist gets nominated,” she added. “In 2010, the reason some of the tea party candidates lost is because the establishment did not support them in the general election.

“There are false assumptions that are bandied about in terms of the conventional wisdom in Washington — and, like most of the things that are the conventional wisdom of the Washington establishment, a lot of their facts are wrong.

The 2014 Congressional elections present an opportunity to win for something.  It will take the strongest most committed candidates to stop the Obamanation, to stop and even roll back what he and the Obamacrats have inflicted on the country.  The need is to articulate change from business as usual, not accommodation, and not to present the image of big business cronyism that Democrats were able to run against, in 2014.

The Tea Party produced the 2010 victories for Republicans just as the conceptually similar Gingrich revolution produced victory in 1994. While never underestimating the ability of the Washington Republican establishment to snatch defeat from the jaws of meaningful victory, even perfidy in following up on victory, the opportunity arises once again and it is because of what conservatives, including the Tea Party movement, have to offer.

According to Gary Bauer, Chairman of Campaign for Working Families,  analyzing  a recent CNN poll:

. . . (The CNN poll) found Republicans had expanded their lead over the Democrats to five points in the generic ballot test for the 2014 congressional elections. Two months ago, Democrats were leading by eight.

But even that huge swing does not tell the whole story. Here’s more bad news for Obama, Reid and Pelosi:

There is a big enthusiasm gap. 36% of Republicans are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting next year. Only 22% of Democrats say the same.

Obama is a big drag on Democrats. While Republicans are generically ahead of Democrats by five points, voters overwhelmingly prefer candidates who will oppose Obama’s agenda. When asked whether they preferred to vote for a candidate who opposed Obama or one who supported Obama, 55% of voters said they were more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who opposes him, while 40% said they were likely to vote for a candidate who supports him.

That last figure highlights a major contradiction in the liberal media’s reporting. Big Media’s mantra has been that the public overwhelmingly wants Washington to get along and work together. When liberal pundits say that, they generally mean that Republicans need to cave in to Obama’s demands.

But here is polling data clearly indicating that voters want more politicians who will fight Obama’s radical agenda.    (bold typeface our emphasis)

All that is needed to blow this opportunity to take over the Senate and keep the House is for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to be successful at producing a field of easy to image  country club,  big -business types  who will aggravate populist resentments that do not exist with sincere articulate conservatives.      R Mall

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