This Could Be a Major Move

Josh Marshall

The Chamber of Commerce, for everything else it may or may not be about, doesn't want recurrent run-ups to world-rocking debt defaults, government shutdowns that damp GDP, major corporate vendors going unpaid on government contracts. But when does the rubber meet the road? With the source of these dramas coming from the Republican party and more particularly its Tea Party wing, when does it stop funding these candidates?

I don't expect the Chamber to start becoming a major funder of Democratic candidates, though there are more busienss-oriented Dems who might get that support. But what about intervening in GOP primary battles to protect the sane Republicans from Tea Party circumcellions?

Yet maybe we're seeing some step toward that. Scott Reed, longtime Republican strategist, now firmly entrenched at the Chamber says "We are going to get engaged. The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness."

Saying I'll believe it when I see it sounds a bit more cynical and disbelieving than I am. But this will be a difficult thing to pull off, as tangled up in the GOP and conservative movements as the Chamber is and with all the gravitational pull toward the Tea Party.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/this-could-be-a-major-move

FreedomWorks CEO: 'A Real Possibility' That The GOP Splits In Two

FreedomWorks chief Matt Kibbe said Friday said that divisions on the right could cause the Republican Party to split in two.

During an apperance on CSPAN, the tea party leader responded to a piece in The Washington Times indcating that some "prominent Republicans are saying that if the GOP loses the 2016 presidential elections, the party will go the way of the Whigs — or formally split into a moderate party and a conservative party."

"I think that's a real possibility because you're seeing this clash between the new generation and — to me, it's not just the old wing of the Republican Party versus the new wing —you're really seeing a disintermediation in politics. It's already happened with the Democratic Party," Kibbe said. "It's happening with the Republican Party now. And grassroots activists have an ability to self-organize, to fund candidates they're more interested in, going right around the Republican National Committee and senatorial committee."

"That's the new reality," he continued. "Everything's more democratized and Republicans should come to terms with that. They still wanna control things from the top down and if they do that, there will absolutely be a split. But my prediction would be that we take over the Republican Party and they go the way of the whigs."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/freedomworks-ceo-a-real-possibility-that-the-gop-splits-in-two