Inside the Beltway: Seeking a ground game

The din continues. Fierce tea party loyalists and traditional conservatives continue to squawk about Karl Rove and “establishment Republicans,” convinced that the faction will compromise GOP chances in upcoming elections. Outspoken tea partyers say their grass-roots sensibility is the key to supporting and electing viable candidates.

Mr. Rove, adviser to the uber-fundraising American Crossroads super PAC and its newly launched the Conservative Victory Project, claims that he, too, seeks electable winners, and will continue to do so. The arguments are reaching critical mass, even as gleeful liberals celebrate on the sidelines, convinced that there’s internal discord in the Grand Old Party and that a third party could come bubbling up from the mess, and thus split the vote in 2014 and 2016.

Is the GOP fractured? Not likely. These are the predictable growing pains and sword rattling of the Republican quest to reorganize itself and forge a new identity. They’ve got, oh, three months to reach a compromise to match the formidable Democratic outreach machine already up and running for the midterms next year. Mr. Rove, meanwhile, has defended his organization on Fox News and elsewhere in the past 24 hours. But tea party stalwarts are still not buying it.

“Rove mentioned that they raised and spent over $300 million. While this is true, when you consider their track record, they wasted the money. Perhaps it is time for Rove’s donors to donate to organizations who can produce a ground game to compete with the left,” says Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, citing tea party victories in the 2010 midterms, in the 2012 Wisconsin recall, and in the “unwinnable” Washington state Senate, now run by a Republican conference.

“That happened because of the tea party ground game. Rather than spend hundreds of millions of dollars on useless TV ads that only tear down the opponent, in Washington we articulated a conservative message that draws voters to our cause,” Ms. Martin declares. “That’s what conservatives have always been about, winning hearts and minds with a message of personal freedom, fiscal responsibility and limited government.”

IN THE BREW

And now there’s another new PAC out of all this. The aforementioned Patriots have launched Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, a political action committee seeking modest donations from concerned citizens, and “dedicated to supporting those candidates who will sincerely work to rein in out-of-control government and to oppose those candidates who will not. We do not discriminate between political parties.”

Founder Jenny Beth Martin explains, “The tea party movement must hold every politician who supports higher taxes and even higher spending accountable, regardless of their political party. If that means we have to defeat some of these big-government politicians in primaries, so be it.”

BUMPER PATROL

“Madness takes a heavy toll. Please have exact change ready.”

(Bumper sticker spotted in Washington, D.C.)

GIPPER PEAK

The Nevada Board of Geographic Names has the paperwork. Determined organizers from the Mount Reagan Project have filed the forms asking the state agency to officially dedicate 4,052-foot Frenchman Mountain — located between the Las Vegas valley to the west and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area to the east — as “Mount Reagan.” The group has organized a national petition and will present the signatures to the state of Nevada in three months.

“Ronald Reagan led America forward to defeat the threats to our prosperity of high taxes, inflation and recession at home and a surging Soviet empire abroad,” says Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, but also chairman of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, the parent organization of the project.

“Reagan left America stronger, freer and safer than the day he became president. Adding his name to the shortlist of great American presidents who have mountains named after them is an honor richly deserved,” Mr. Norquist says.

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