Crossroads allies are creating a new group to oppose candidates like Todd Akin. Crossroads effort mocked on right

Two powerful conservative groups reacted with scorn Sunday to a newly unveiled American Crossroads initiative, dubbed the Conservative Victory Project, that plans to work against Republican primary candidates it views as unelectable.

Crossroads president Steven Law told the New York Times that Crossroads allies are creating the new organization to oppose candidates such as former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, who lost a once-competitive Senate race last year. “There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” Law said.


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Both the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund – two of the most prominent groups that have boosted candidates on the right – mocked the new initiative as yet another hapless establishment-side attempt to muzzle the GOP base.

Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, branded it the “Conservative Defeat Project.”

“The Conservative Defeat Project is yet another example of the Republican establishment’s hostility toward its conservative base. Rather than listening to the grassroots and working to advance their principles, the establishment has chosen to declare war on the party’s most loyal supporters,” Hoskins said. “If they keep this up, the party will remain in the wilderness for decades to come.”

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Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller essentially responded by pointing to the scoreboard in recent primaries in which conservative insurgents have prevailed and emerged as influential GOP leaders.

“They are welcome to support the likes of Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist and David Dewhurst,” Keller said of the new Crossroads group. “We will continue to proudly support the likes of Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.”

The Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund spent tens of millions of dollars in the 2012 cycle, in large part to boost ideologically sympathetic candidates in primary elections. Crossroads was the heaviest spender on the GOP side last year but did not get involved in nomination fights.

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Crossroads strategists have signaled for months that the group will engage in GOP primaries in the 2014 cycle, but only now is the battlefield of competitive races beginning to take shape. Law told the Times that the Iowa Senate race, where strongly conservative Rep. Steve King is mulling a bid, could be a first target, suggesting King has a “Todd Akin problem.”

Some GOP strategists quietly fretted Sunday that such a provocative slap at the Iowan might only increase the odds of a King-for-Senate campaign. The Republican firm Harper Polling released a survey last week showing King would start out as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the race to replace retiring Democrat Tom Harkin, leading Rep. Tom Latham in a head-to-head contest by 17 points. King would trail Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley in a general election by 5 points.

Iowa isn’t the only state where the outcome of a GOP primary may affect the competitiveness of the general election. Republican operatives have already identified Senate races in Louisiana, Alaska and Georgia as contests where strident, activist-oriented candidates could damage the party’s chances of a pickup.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee started the cycle by vowing to cooperate more with the GOP base on selecting strong, ideologically acceptable nominees. In one notable move, the committee tapped Cruz – the Club for Growth endorsee just elected to the Senate from Texas – as a vice chairman of the committee for grassroots outreach.

Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio pushed back on criticism of the Conservative Victory Project by calling it an effort to enshrine “the William F. Buckley Rule, and finding the best conservative candidates in House and Senate primaries who can win in general elections.”

“Our party has lost at least six senate seats in the last two election cycles not because of conservative ideas, but because of undisciplined candidates and weak campaigns,” Collegio said. “Those six seats have cost Republicans control of the U.S. Senate and frankly made it impossible to stop Obama’s fiscal cliff tax hikes last month. In our primaries, we need to elect conservative, disciplined candidates with strong fundraising operations and a wellspring of local support.”

Conservative activists have countered that Washington-approved Republican Senate nominees didn’t fare much better in 2012: if ideological standard-bearers like Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock went down in defeat, so did establishment-backed nominees like Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg and North Dakota Rep. Rick Berg.

Back in the 2010 cycle, Republicans blamed inept nominees selected by the activist base for costing them Senate races in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada, where conservative former state legislator Sharron Angle lost to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.