STEPHANIE RUHLE (HOST): Former Goldman Sachs managing director Steve Bannon speaking about the establishment, drawing battle lines against the GOP establishment in a speech at the Values Voter Summit this week in D.C. Bannon ratcheted up his brand of populist rhetoric and slammed the GOP agenda.

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RUHLE: I just want to remind you, when Steve Bannon goes after the establishment over and over and goes after globalists and capitalists, let's remember, he is financed by the Mercer family. Robert Mercer, the co-founder of Renaissance, one of the largest and most profitable hedge funds on the planet. A [company] currently in dispute of back taxes to the tune of almost $7 billion.

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RUHLE: Jonathan, if you were Mitch McConnell, would this worry you?

JONATHAN ALLEN: It would worry me because what happens with these intimidation campaigns, the sort of guerilla warfare that Steve Bannon and his allies are running, is they are simply going to try to put fear into a couple of senators, maybe knock off a few or at least put them in the position of losing primaries or having to fight tough primaries. And that tends to erode Mitch McConnell's support. If your goal is to take out the Senate majority leader, rather than necessaril advance an agenda directly, it’s a lot easier to do that and to claim some measure of victory.

RUHLE: Evan, what in God’s name is happening to the Republican Party, my friend?

EVAN SIEGFRIED: We’re in the middle of a civil war. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts. This is what is happening. And Steve Bannon wants to be that chaos agent and burn it to the ground.

RUHLE: Why should you be in the middle of a civil war? You have everything, you won everything.

SIEGFRIED: Because we haven’t gotten results in the legislature. And that’s what happens. We begin to panic, we begin turning on one another. It’s Mitch McConnell's fault because Mitch McConnell, he just has to say the word and everybody will vote the way he wants it. No, when you’re majority leader, dealing with all of those senators, it’s still like herding cats, and that might actually be easier. What we're seeing Bannon doing, he’s attacking Bob Corker. He is attacking Mike Pence today in the New Yorker. He said that Mike Pence is too close to the Koch brothers, and therefore controlled. So Steve Bannon’s answer? We’re going to primary everybody in the Republican Party who doesn’t follow our point of view. And the last time Steve Bannon did something like this was 2010, and you know who those candidates were that he put up to primary people? Todd Akin, Christine O'Donnell, and other nuts, Sharron Angle, who cost Republicans Senate seats, and made it impossible for us to win because they were so outside of the mainstream.