Georgia to host successive political battles in 2014, 2016

A couple of weeks ago, Julianne Thompson stepped down from one of her Tea Party Patriots leadership roles to serve as the first Chair of the Georgia Republican Assembly, an umbrella organization that comprises a number of the state’s conservative leaders.

In an interview later that day, fellow Charter Member of the Georgia Republican Assembly Kay Godwin, of Georgia Conservatives in Action, essentially declared war on national GOP guru Karl Rove’s Conservative Victory Project.

When we have people in the Republican Party like Karl Rove who are doing their level best to cause Republicans to divide and leave the party, that’s going to totally and completely destroy our party. And we’re bound and determined that is not going to happen.

We’re the core, we’re the ones that have the fundamental values of the Republican Party. Our goal is to bring everybody that has those values back to the party so that we’re strong, so that we’re not limping along like Karl Rove and them want us to do.

Georgia might end up a minor skirmish in the battle for the soul of the Republican Party if it weren’t for Senator Saxby Chambliss announcing he would not run for reelection in 2014. A Chambliss reelection might itself have been a bloodbath, but the necessity of taking on an incumbent US Senator had chilled much speculations.

Whether Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest Tea Party groups, with a substantial Georgia flavor to its leadership engages in Georgia’s 2014 Primary remains to be seen, but the group is arming itself.

One of the nation’s most prominent Tea Party groups has launched a super-PAC that will challenge GOP strategist Karl Rove’s plan to wage primary warfare against other Republicans, opening a new front in the escalating fight between the establishment and grassroots factions of the GOP.

“He sounds like he’s challenging us, and we’re ready to rise to the challenge,” Jenny Beth Martin, founder of the Tea Party Patriots, told The Hill.

Martin’s group last week launched the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, a super-PAC that will be active in House and Senate races in 2014, largely through providing organizational support to help get out the conservative vote.

The Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund has not yet solidified its plans for 2014, but Martin said she sees opportunities in Georgia, Iowa, South Carolina and Montana.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) recently announced he will retire at the end of his current term, opening up a seat that is likely to attract fierce competition for the Republican nomination.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) has already announced his intentions to run for the seat, but Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) is also interested and could find Tea Party support if he launches a bid.

Perhaps Price, who said he will not announce his 2014 intentions till May at the earliest, hopes to combine Tea Party support at the local level with DC money from Rove, but that might be a hard trick to pull off when the two factions are already fighting.

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who is considering running for Senate in Georgia, drew the ire of conservatives this weekend when he indicated on Friday he may not have a problem with Karl Rove’s super PAC pouring money into next year’s Georgia Senate primary, presumably against some of Price’s potential opponents on the right – like Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA).

When asked about Rove’s newly-created super PAC, which conservatives believe was created to wagewar against Tea Party candidates, playing in GOP primaries and attacking conservatives with a barrage of negative ads, Price, according to the National Review, “said he understood why that’s occasionally necessary.”

Meanwhile, Rove denies that his organization is targeting the Tea Party’s influence in the GOP.

[F]irst of all, let’s be clear, we did spend $30 million on behalf of tea party candidates. You had Rand Paul on, and we’re the largest outside group supporting Rand Paul, $2.9 million. And, Marco Rubio, I personally gave him my contribution to help raise money in the primary very early. We gave $25 million of support to tea party candidates in the House.”

“Our object is to avoid having stupid candidates who can’t win general elections, who are undisciplined, can’t raise money, aren’t putting together the support necessary to win a general election campaign, because this money is too difficult to raise to be spending it on behalf of candidates who have little chance of winning in a general election.”

But Rove went on to deny that he is setting out to defeat the tea party.

We’ll discuss the upcoming fight in 2016 in our next piece.