National and state Republicans are working hard and spending freely to blur the dividing line between the tea party and the rest of the GOP.
It's too early to say the tea party's over.
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But with a Senate majority in reach, the Republican Party and its allies are using campaign cash, positions of influence and other levers of power to defuse what they consider challenges by weak conservative candidates before the 2014 midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race. The party is cherry picking other candidates, including some who rode the tea party wave to a House majority in 2010. Some of those lawmakers are getting boosts from the very establishment the class vowed to upend.
It all adds up to an expensive and sweeping effort by national and state Republicans to blur the dividing line between factions that many believe cost the GOP the Senate majority and prolonged the 2012 presidential nomination fight. "We can't expect to win if we are fighting each other all the time," said Matt Borges, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party.
This year, Republicans are within six seats of controlling the Senate. If they win Senate control and keep their House majority, even deeper frustrations would await President Barack Obama in his final two years in office.
By changing rules at the presidential level and showering money and support on candidates in North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and more states, Republican leaders are trying to drum out tea party-approved candidates they consider flawed like ones who were seen as costing the GOP winnable Senate seats in Delaware, Missouri and Nevada in recent years.
"It makes sense to get control of the process," said Borges, who was attending the national Republicans' meeting in Memphis this week where officials were rewriting the rules on presidential debates.
Merging the factions is uncomfortable for all sides, and weighted heavily in favor of the well-financed and organized Republican Party, its state affiliates and allied groups like the Chamber of Commerce. In contrast, the tea party is a loosely affiliated group of conservative activists some who now call themselves the "liberty movement" who favor smaller government and a balanced budget. Public favor is waning for the firebrands, polls find. And as the Republican Party calculates how to cull the best of the tea party's candidates and energy, the activists are trying to figure out what they've won in the four-year-long struggle for control of the GOP.
More here:
Is tea party power in decline?