Boehner rebukes hard right of GOP
WASHINGTON — The Republican establishment’s much-anticipated pushback against the tea party wing is under way. House Speaker John Boehner made that clear Thursday, when he renewed his denunciation of groups that try to defeat GOP incumbents they consider too willing to compromise with Democrats.
Some Republican loyalists wonder what took so long. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently took steps to help mainstream Republicans in party primaries, but Boehner’s high-profile outburst will move the effort to the GOP’s front burners.
Cheering him on are mainstream Republicans who angrily watched for three years as hard-right groups exercised remarkable clout in the party, the Congress and elections. Tea party-backed nominees helped the GOP win control of the House in 2010, but they also lost several Senate races seen as winnable, keeping the Senate in Democratic hands.
This past summer, uncompromising Republicans forced a partial government shutdown that damaged the party’s image, just as Boehner warned it would.
Many Republicans also feel conservative activists pushed presidential nominee Mitt Romney so far to the right on immigration and other issues that it eased President Barack Obama’s path to re-election last year.
“The establishment has no choice at this point,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who has criticized the tea party’s growing influence. “So they’re taking them on.”
“To follow these groups is a downward spiral,” Davis said.
Those groups will fight back hard, Davis warned, and it’s not clear which faction will prevail in next year’s midterm elections and beyond.
For a second straight day, Boehner criticized groups such as Heritage Action, the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity. These Washington-based organizations vary on priorities and tactics. But all have sharply rebuked Republican leaders on key issues. And they have aided insurgent Republican challengers who vow never to compromise with Democrats, even if it means shutting down the government or defaulting on the federal debt.
Critics say the groups chiefly want to raise money by constantly inflaming political activists.
“They’re misleading their followers,” Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters at the Capitol. “I just think that they’ve lost all credibility.”
The issue at hand was a bipartisan budget plan that makes modest changes in spending levels. It is meant to avert another government shutdown and budget crisis in the near future.
