GOP Family Feud: 'Showboat' DeMint Takes on 'Tyrant' McConnell
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell is more than a little aggravated with the Senate Conservatives Fund, and who can blame him.
The youngish but well-financed Tea Party organization has targeted McConnell, a five-termer from Kentucky and highest-ranking Senate Republican, by helping to bankroll a primary challenger and using the race as an intraparty, us vs. them proxy.
McConnell in recent days has publicly accused the fund, which supported the government shutdown as an anti-Obamacare tactic, of "giving conservatism a bad name" and "participating in ruining the [Republican] brand." He reportedly scolded a Senate candidate from Nebraska in private for linking arms with the fund.
And last month McConnell's influence was apparent when the national committee that works to get Republicans elected to the Senate said it wouldn't do business with an advertising firm affiliated with the fund.
This is what former McConnell staffer Josh Holmes, now with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told The Hill newspaper about that decision: "SCF has been wandering around the country destroying the Republican Party like a drunk who tears up every bar they walk into. The difference this cycle is that they strolled into Mitch McConnell's bar and he doesn't throw you out, he locks the door."
The fund's response went something like this: McConnell is a bully, full of threats and bluster.
Fighting words, indeed.
For those who don't slavishly follow party machinations and political money, we thought we'd take a quick look at the Senate Conservatives Fund, its money, and why it is causing McConnell and other establishment Republicans so much grief. The Kentucky conservative is just one of seven GOP Senate incumbents facing primary challenges of varying seriousness from the party's Tea Party wing.
Brainchild Of Tea Party 'Godfather'
The fund, a political action committee, was founded in 2008 by then-South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a small-government conservative viewed by many as the godfather of the Tea Party movement.
When DeMint left the Senate earlier this year to become the president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the fund, led by a cadre of his former staffers, including Matt Hoskins, got a national boost.
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