http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/conservative-leaders-predict-tea-party-will-win-gop-s-civil-war#sthash.8clTG3i7.dpufConservative Leaders Predict Tea Party Will Win GOP’s ‘Civil War’
April 4, 2014 - 4:19 PM
By Barbara Hollingsworth
(CNSNews.com) – The increasingly open “civil war” now raging between a Republican establishment that favors big government and members of the Tea Party is a necessary evil that will eventually force the GOP back to its limited government principles, conservative leaders say.
“This is part of a literally 102-year-old civil war that’s been going on in the Republican Party since 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt leaves the Republican Party, splits the party, starts the Bull Moose Party, which leads directly to Woodrow Wilson’s election with less than 42 percent of the vote,” Conservative HQ chairman Richard Viguerie told CNSNews.com.
“It’s a major fault line in the Republican Party and it’s been coming to a head since 2009, when the Tea Party was launched,” he added. “Even though the Republicans in the House owe their majority status to the Tea Party, they want it to do what they did, which is to change once they got to Washington.
“The Tea Party is finally waking up much of America,” Viguerie pointed out, predicting that the Republican Party will have a Tea Party presidential nominee in 2016.
But that won’t happen without a fight. Last month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told The New York Times that the GOP was going to “crush” Tea Party challengers.
And later this month, both House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) are scheduled to speak at the Main Street Partnership PAC’s April 11-13th retreat at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla. The PAC, which is run by former Ohio GOP Congressman Steve LaTourette, is targeting Tea Party candidates who challenge Republican incumbents in party primaries.
“LaTourette is probably the best friend of organized labor than any other Republican in a long time,” Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, told CNSNews.com
LaTourette also heads another group funded by a union in Chicago that spent $1 million to run pro-union candidates in Republican primaries, Mix said. But with the public’s awareness of the issue of compulsory unionism growing stronger every day, he added, “I wonder what Cantor and McCarthy are going to say to these folks.”
Viguerie says he is not surprised that members of the GOP leadership are courting union-backed groups while turning on the Tea Party.
“That’s who they are. They’re big government Republicans,” Viguerie told CNSNews.com. “They’re not misled, they’re not being deceived. They’re very comfortable being part of the ruling class, the big government wing of the Republican Party. There’s not that much difference ideologically between them and big gove
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