A slice of corporate America thinks tea partyers have overstayed their welcome in Washington and should be shown the door in next year's congressional elections.
In what could be a sign of challenges to come across the country, two U.S. House races in Michigan mark a turnabout from several years of widely heralded contests in which right-flank candidates have tried — sometimes successfully — to unseat Republican incumbents they perceive as not being conservative enough.
In the Michigan races, longtime Republican businessmen are taking on two House incumbents — hardline conservative Reps. Justin Amash and Kerry Bentivolio — in GOP primaries. The 16-day partial government shutdown and the threatened national default are bringing to a head a lot of pent-up frustration over GOP insurgents roughing up the business community's agenda.
. . . Call it the wrath of establishment Republicans and corporate America, always considered the best of friends. Since the Republican takeover of the House in 2010, they've watched the GOP insurgents slow a transportation bill and reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, block a treaty governing the high seas and stand in the way of comprehensive immigration legislation.
The final straw was the bitter budget standoff that partly shuttered the government, precipitated by Republicans like Amash and Bentivolio who enlisted early in the campaign demanding that President Barack Obama dismantle his health care law in exchange for keeping the government operating.
Even after 16 days of a shutdown, falling poll numbers for the GOP and a threatened economy-jarring default, the two broke with their House Republican leaders and voted against the final deal to reopen the government.
Long before the shutdown, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has spent tens of millions boosting mainly Republicans in congressional races, urged the GOP to fund the government and prevent a default, then double back and try and work out changes to the health care law later.
A significant number of House Republicans have given a cold-shoulder to the Chamber's agenda.
The article mentions a new political action committee - Defending Main Street - that looks to back center right candidates against the more conservative candidates backed by Heritage Action, Club for Growth and Freedom Works.
