FreedomWorks CEO Matt Kibbe, during in an interview on CSPAN, said that, in light of all the heavy conflict going on within the Republican party, a schism is “a real possibility,” reported Talking Points Memo.
Kibbe made the comments in response to Washington Times article that asserts if the GOP suffers a 2016 loss, “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.”
The Washington Post article outlines the debacled GOP attempts to fight the Affordable Care Act and the opposition between the Tea Party faction and Republicans considered to be more centrist. Those on the center-right have indicted those in the Ted Cruz camp as being “destructive of their own party.” Cruz and his followers, however, have railed against those on the outside of their faction as weak and “had no fight in them.”
Kibbe, being a figurehead of the Tea Party movement, and his group think that, overall, the GOP “too soft on Democrats” on lifting the shutdown that put nearly a million people out of work. And when the Tea Party has the opportunity to fight again after the current, temporary deal runs out, they will come back in force.
As for the first fight, Kibbe said on CSPAN that “Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have partnered with Harry Reid to pass a blank check to the president on the budget fight. There is no reform of Obamacare, there’s no defunding, there’s no delays. Um… we lost.”
But that’s exactly it, they lost. The “center-right” Republicans seem to realize that they’ve lost. What the Tea Party doesn’t realize, however, is that “moral victories” don’t benefit a country.
The Affordable Care Act was one of Obama’s first orders of business. It passed Congress, was signed by Obama, and the Supreme Court upheld its lawfulness. And the law now isn’t what was originally drafted as the Republicans already got the compromise and negotiation that they were screaming for in recent weeks.
Should the Tea Party faction break off from the GOP and become its own, ultra-conservative party, conservatives will weaken wholly. The Democrats and Republicans would remain the same and would eventually pit themselves against the Tea Party, if the Tea Party didn’t instigate a fight first. And that minority of “super-Republicans” would get stamped out election after election. But there are still three more years to tell.
Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.
