Tea Party to GOP: We Made You, So Now Repeal Obamacare
Demonstrators with the Tea Party protest the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting of the Tea Party and similar groups during a rally called 'Audit the IRS' outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, June 19, 2013.
Photograph by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty ImagesThe tinny voice of Mitch McConnell peeped out of an iPhone speaker and echoed into an empty room. It was shortly before 2:30, and a coalition of conservative groups was gathering to explain how the Republican majority needed to do what the base was asking. It was what they were hearing from the local Tea Party groups that, increasingly, blamed their post-2011 shrinkage on the IRS's campaigns against them. Conservatives demanded credit for 2014.
"The Karl Rove branch of the GOP is now trying to damage the Tea Party brand," said Tom Zawistowski, executive director of Portage County, Ohio's Tea Party group. "That's a bunch of bunk. He's basically inferring that the Tea Party candidates were inferior, but he happens to leave out Joni Ernst and Tom Cotton. He's trying to fool the media."