Photo Credit: AP/Paul SancyaBy Donna Cassata.

A slice of corporate America thinks tea partyers have overstayed their welcome in Washington and should be shown the door in next year’s congressional elections.

In what could be a sign of challenges to come across the country, two U.S. House races in Michigan mark a turnabout from several years of widely heralded contests in which right-flank candidates have tried — sometimes successfully — to unseat Republican incumbents they perceive as not being conservative enough.

In the Michigan races, longtime Republican businessmen are taking on two House incumbents — hardline conservative Reps. Justin Amash and Kerry Bentivolio — in GOP primaries. The 16-day partial government shutdown and the threatened national default are bringing to a head a lot of pent-up frustration over GOP insurgents roughing up the business community’s agenda.

Democrats hope to use this rift within the GOP to their advantage. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House committee to elect Democrats, insists there’s been “buyer’s remorse with House Republicans who have been willing to put the economy at risk,” and that it is opening the political map for Democrats in 2014.

That’s what the Democrats would be expected to say. But there’s also Defending Main Street, a new GOP-leaning group that’s halfway to its goal of raising $8 million. It plans to spend that money on center-right Republicans who face a triumvirate of deep-pocketed conservative groups — Heritage Action, Club for Growth and Freedom Works — and their preferred, typically tea party candidates.

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Photo Credit: AP/Alex BrandonBig Business Declares War on Tea Party: Pledge to Support GOP Establishment

By Patrice Hill.

The recent fiscal crisis has opened a major rift between the tea party wing of the Republican Party and business groups that traditionally have backed Republicans, with many business leaders now vowing to get involved more in GOP primaries to try to counter insurgent candidates.

Tea party leaders are defiant, saying they will not change course despite criticism from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable and other top business groups.

But business leaders argue that the scorched-earth tactics used by tea party Republicans during the 16-day shutdown and debate over raising the federal government’s borrowing limit marked the fourth time since the GOP took control of the House in 2011 that tea party adherents precipitated a governmental crisis that zapped consumer and business confidence, raised uncertainty and exerted a major drag on economic growth.

Besides encouraging more business-friendly candidates in primary contests, business groups are rallying behind establishment Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who is being targeted by tea party activists for brokering a deal to temporarily raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government, while launching a negotiation with Democrats over budget cuts and proposed tax and entitlement reforms.

Business executives agree with many tea party goals such as cutting the deficit and reforming entitlement spending, but they argue that conservative lawmakers have erred in their tactics and wounded the economy by driving the government with increasing frequency into states of crisis and dysfunction — this time for the ultimately unsuccessful cause of trying to force President Obama to cancel his health care law.

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Photo Credit: APWar on Tea Party: GOP Establishment, Big Business Gearing Up for Battle

By Tony Lee.

On November 5, Defending Main Street, one of the most prominent Republican establishment groups formed with the intent of destroying the Tea Party, will meet with wealthy Wall Street donors to begin building up its war chest before the 2014 midterm elections.

As the Associated Press notes, these Republicans believe the Tea Party has “overstayed their welcome in Washington and should be shown the door in next year’s congressional elections.” Now they are taking action to start raising the money they think will be needed to make that a reality.

“Hopefully we’ll go into eight to 10 races and beat the snot out of them,” former Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), who is running the group aiming “to raise $8 million to fend off tea party challenges,” recently told National Journal. “We’re going to be very aggressive and we’re going to get in their faces.”

Defending Main Street “plans to spend that money on center-right Republicans who face a triumvirate of deep-pocketed conservative groups–Heritage Action, Club for Growth and Freedom Works.”

LaTourette expressed his frustrations to the Associated Press, saying that “40, 42 House members have effectively denied the Republican Party the power of the majority” that it won in the 2010 election. He did not acknowledge that Republicans only won that majority on the strength of Tea Party voters who have now accused some of those elected officials of abandoning the intrests of those who elected them.

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