Juan Williams notes the difference between the $30 donors and the $30,000 donors to the Republican party.
As a very high-ranking Republican told me last week: “We have a total split between people who give us $30 and the people who give us $30,000.”
The $30 donors are the Tea Party donors. The $30,000 donors are business groups.
The Tea Party donors are the red-face folks listening to right-wing radio while buying Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) promise that he could end ObamaCare with a government shutdown.
They are the people who clicked “donate” on websites last week to give to the Senate Conservatives Fund as the group trumpeted its decision to oppose Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The SCF endorsed Matt Bevin, McConnell’s Tea Party opponent in the Kentucky primary. ...TheHill
Trouble is, that it's more complicated than that. For example, behind the $3o donors -- those redfaced tea partyers -- stand at least two sources of very big money. The Koch brothers' red faces are visible behind every cuckoo utterance and every cuckoo vote of the far right. The result? The traditional big business donors are regrouping and pulling out their checkbooks.
Money from the extreme right-wing has come to dominate GOP politics, especially in the primaries, and eclipse the party’s moderate, business-first identity. That is why big business is getting back in the game.
David French, a lobbyist for the National Retail Federation, told reporters that business groups will put money in the hands of possibly 25 non-Tea Party, pro-business Republicans in the 2014 midterms.
And last week Dirk Van Dongen, chief lobbyist of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, fired an opening shot at the Tea Party, telling the Washington Post: “I don’t know of anybody in the business community who take the side of the Taliban minority.”
Welcome to the money war for the future of the GOP. ...TheHill
Next: we need to track the money going to the Democrats. Generally speaking, big business divides its donations between both big parties -- hedging their bets. We'll see how well the party with the greatest distance from the tea party does financially from its rival party's ties to that group.
And we'll be watching how Republican party distances itself from (throws out?) the far right.
