The Conservative Victory Project: Can the GOP tame its Tea Party wing?
Karl Rove has founded a new group to help defeat far-right candidates in Republican primaries
The biggest donors in the GOP are using their considerable financial ammunition to take aim at members of their own party. According to Jeff Zeleny at The New York Times, a new group, the Conservative Victory Project, has been created to help organize opposition to far-right conservative candidates who may derail Republican efforts to win back the Senate. Says Zeleny:
The Conservative Victory Project is already focusing on Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a controversial conservative whom polls show with a lead in a potential primary matchup for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D). "We're concerned about Steve King's Todd Akin problem," Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads, told the Times. The Conservative Victory Project is also expected to be involved in the open race to replace another retiring senator, Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia.
By most counts, Republicans lost six Senate races in the last two election cycles because they fielded candidates who were too conservative or otherwise unpalatable to the general electorate. However, conservative groups are bristling at Rove's attempt to tip the scales into the primary process with negative advertising and more. According to Alexander Burns at Politico:
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Conservatives point out that establishment-backed candidates lost close elections in North Dakota and Montana in the last election, while several rising stars in the Senate, such as Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas), came up through the Tea Party. Furthermore, they blame Rove — as well as his patron, George W. Bush — for the mess the GOP currently finds itself in. As James Antle at The Daily Caller writes:
Indeed, judging by the angry response to the Conservative Victory Project in some quarters of the conservative world, it seems that the group has so far proved more adept at dividing the party than unifying it around electable candidates. And there's no indication that the group's deep pockets will have any effect: Rove's American Crossroads super PAC was a spectacular failure in the 2012 election, winning only 30 percent of the contests it participated in. Rove's abysmal success rate has been gleefully pointed out by his opponents. As Erick Erickson at Red State says, "Thank God they are behind this. In 2012, they spent hundreds of millions of rich donors' money and had jack to show for it."
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Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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