Split Between Conservative Bagmen, Rove and Koch, Speaks To Larger GOP Divide

This summer there was a strange dance taking place within the Republican Party, a Chaplin-esque darting through doors as the party attempted to find consensus on the nation’s budget. Boehner would agree to an Obama/Biden package of cuts and raises, head to the House, and be shooed back to the White House for a better offer. In the end, all of this back-and-forth resulted in two things: A) House Republicans actually accepting less on August 2^nd than what Democrats offered them in June, and B) the clear sign that there was unrest in the Republican camp. This has played out, to a lesser extent now that many of those House Tea Party Freshmen are into their own tenuous campaign season, at nearly every level of political establishment: from state courthouses to national media food-fights.

In 2010 Karl Rove, as well as the Koch Brothers (David and Charles) PAC, Americans for Prosperity, raised millions for conservative candidates around the country; establishing the two entities as the king-makers of the Republican party in Washington. However, over the summer the two camps split ways on the most critical partisan legislation the present congress has faced. The network of deep-pocketed conservative funders established by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie last year heavily supported John Boehner’s original plan to raise the debt ceiling. However, Americans for Prosperity backed the Tea Party initiative to oppose the debt-ceiling raise, even to the point of a government shutdown.

With both groups announcing their intentions to raise over $200 million for conservative Republican candidacies this year, one might be lead to believe that they’ll get along once again with a swing election year on the line. However, recent developments show that blood is still sour between them. Both have announced intentions to set up voter databanks to assist candidates in their efforts to get out the vote in 2012. The Republican National Committee recently announced its intention to partner with Rove and Gillespie on a privately owned database. Art Pope, who chairs an arm of Americans for Prosperity, told POLITICO, “With a broad-based conservative movement — or any political movement — it’s obvious that there’s often going to be competition, rivalries, egos involved.”

Clearly, egos are involved. Karl Rove, who is a mainstay in the mainstream news cycle, promotes a more media-saturated “brand” for the establishment Republicans. The free-market Tea Party Republicans, however, enjoy a lot of corporate cash from Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and a number of other donors; donors that can remain largely anonymous thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision. However, not having the media-saturation is largely in keeping with the Tea Party’s brand as outsiders…”mavericks” if you will. What remains to be seen is whether these battling egos, and their political ideologies, will bolster the Republican ticket in 2012, or whether the infighting will hurt both sides.