Republcan v. Republican: The Senate Conservatives Fund
There’s a new public enemy No. 1 in Senate GOP circles, and it’s not Ted Cruz.
It’s the Senate Conservatives Fund, an organization that used to prop up underdog conservative candidates but now is training its fire mainly on Republican incumbents — rather than Democrats. The group has ginned up anger on the far-right towards Republican senators for refusing to use a government shutdown threat as leverage to defund Obamacare — a campaign that has been good for its bottom line.
Since it started engaging in the defund Obamacare campaign, the group brought in the vast majority of the $3.5 million it has raised this cycle, pulling in $1.5 million in August as it unleashed a barrage of attacks on party leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn and veteran Republicans like Lamar Alexander.
The conservative organization is part of a tight-knit circle of third-party groups ratcheting up the GOP vs. GOP warfare that has consumed Republicans since the rise of the tea party in the 2010 midterm elections. The activists say without purist conservative lawmakers, the Republican Party implicitly supports Obama policies by working with Democrats. But GOP senators argue that the party needs to expand its tent and will occasionally need to compromise to work in a divided Washington.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/senate-conservatives-fund-roils-gop-97505.html#ixzz2gO8rWcyA
