In the Republican civil war between the pragmatic and the principled, outside spending groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund have continued to roil the waters by backing tea party candidates against more establishment Republican incumbents, often infuriating the GOP leadership.

But in states and districts where victory doesn’t seem out of reach, tea party organizations have been generously backing the underdogs. And in this intra-party battle, the tea party’s rallying cry has been that many incumbents aren’t true representatives of the conservative cause.

So which accused RINOs (“Republicans in name only”) have fended off, or are currently fending off, the best-financed challengers?

The Emergency Committee for Israel has also weighed in with a $151,075 ad hitting the congressman for being the only Republican to vote “present” on a 2012 resolution that reasserted the Obama administration would continue to furnish Israel with military supplies amid the American withdrawal from Iraq.

It appears his offenses also include a vote against the Republican budget plan devised by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).





4. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) – $272,000

The TeaParty.net Leadership Fund , a PAC, has spent $238,799 opposing Boehner and $33,558 boosting his tea party opponent, J.D. Winteregg. TeaParty.net’s organizers were so eager to take down Boehner, they announced their intention to spend $25,000 against him before there was even a challenger. Good luck with that.

5. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) – $244,000 Simpson is staring down the most competitive race since his 1998 election to Congress. Club for Growth Action and FreedomWorks, and other groups that lean far to the right, have spent $206,634 to defeat Simpson and $36,869 in support of challenger Bryan Smith, a corporate lawyer. Club for Growth’s PAC has pitched in as well, spending $21,000 for Smith. 6. Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) – $106,000 The Tea Party Express/Our Country Deserves Better PAC dumped $105,857 into supporting state Sen. Owen Hill’s primary campaign before he bowed out last month, allowing Gardner to focus on his general election bid to unseat Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.). Gardner’s experience in the House marked him as a GOP insider. The tea party group’s spending occurred before Gardner officially announced his candidacy, but when he announced, the group’s chairman attacked him as “the establishment’s anointed candidate.” A few runners up to this list also deserve mention. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) would almost certainly feature on this list had he not soundly quashed tea party favorite Sen. Steve Stockman in an early primary. Simpson has run afoul of tea party conservatives in part because of his close alliance with Boehner. On the other hand, the National Rifle Association has endorsed him, and its PAC has spent $45,516 on his behalf.

Once considered a winnable race for the anti-establishment right, Milton Wolf’s campaign against incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) has swerved somewhat off track of late — something the Senate Conservatives Fund can’t be happy about; it has already spent more than $107,000 on behalf of Wolf.

Tea party groups don’t just support challengers, of course, since some of candidates they’ve backed in the past are now in office. Example: Club for Growth has spent $195,000 to undercut Brian Ellis’s campaign to upend Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), an especially fiscally conservative libertarian. It seems tea party groups support incumbents too, so long as they’re aligned with the far-right.

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The rankings will change as primary dates inch ever closer. Our tallies do not include the “issue” ads favored by Americans for Prosperity and other organizations so far this cycle; those are often aimed to influence elections, but do not specifically endorse or attack a candidate and thus needn’t be reported until the election is closer. Clarification, April 4: This post has been updated to better explain the Tea Party Express/Our Country Deserves Better PAC’s spending in the Senate race in Colorado.

Photo: Tea party organizers stage a protest at the Georgia state capitol, May 21, 2013. (Georgia Pundit/Todd Rehm)



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