'Members of Congress understand what we do and why we do it,' said Chris Chocola. No apologies from Club for Growth

Since the GOP’s drubbing at the ballot box last month, most of the party’s institutions – elected Republican leaders, advocacy groups, campaign committees and more – have engaged in some level of soul-searching about what on earth went wrong.

And then there’s the Club for Growth.


The conservative outside group amassed a decidedly mixed record in 2012, spending millions to support hardline candidates in primaries and general elections. Blamed by some in the Republican establishment for foisting unelectable candidates on the GOP – inept Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock, for one – the Club is utterly unapologetic for its slash-and-burn approach to intra-party politics.

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The organization’s modus operandi was on vivid display once again this week, as the Club’s leadership called for the defeat of House Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” proposal to resolve the fiscal cliff, calling it an unacceptable combination of tax increases and phony spending cuts. That meant staking out ground to the right of even Americans for Tax Reform and its leader, high-profile activist Grover Norquist, who gave Republicans a free pass to support a measure that wouldn’t have averted tax increases on Americans earning more than $1 million per year.

The Club wasn’t the only entity on the right to oppose Plan B – the behemoth independent-spending group Americans for Prosperity did, too, along with Heritage Action. But at the outset of the 2014 cycle, there’s no organization that provokes more frustration among GOP elites than the Club, and no electoral force with the same potential to wreak havoc on establishment-backed candidates.

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In an interview with POLITICO, Club for Growth president Chris Chocola said the group views the fiscal cliff debate as a crucible for the Republican Party’s 2014 lineup.

“If we do things that make people uncomfortable or angry, that’s OK. But if we do things that surprise people, that’s not OK,” Chocola said. “Members of Congress understand what we do and why we do it. The fact that we watch these races, I think, has a positive impact on their voting patterns. I think that the discussion or the votes taken during the whole fiscal cliff and debt ceiling debates will be instructive. I think they will give context to the primary season.”

Asked to defend the Club’s involvement in contested, bloody primaries, Chocola responded by naming the group’s most-celebrated success stories: “I’ll give you three names: [Pennsylvania Sen. Pat] Toomey, [Florida Sen. Marco] Rubio and [Texas Sen. Ted] Cruz. But for the Club, we might not know those names.” In 2010, the Club also endorsed South Carolina Sen.-designate Tim Scott in his first congressional primary.

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“It’s a fact that the Club for Growth supported those candidates when almost no one else did,” Chocola said. “People want to throw out [failed 2010 Nevada Senate candidate Sharron] Angle and Mourdock, that’s fine. We supported those candidates. And they lost.”

One Club for Growth strategist put an even finer point on it, saying flatly that it’s not the group’s problem to worry about the overall GOP win-loss record. Nor is the Club concerned about the damage it inflicts on its foes in primaries even if it hobbles them for the general election. That’s what happened last summer in the Wisconsin Senate primary, when the Club savaged former Gov. Tommy Thompson in order to boost an unsuccessful primary challenger, sending Thompson into the fall battered and drained of funds.

“What people don’t understand about the Club is, we’re not Republicans. We’re not an arm of the Republican Party. Our job is not to win elections,” the strategist said. “We care about finding a few champions of economic freedom and supporting them to the best of our ability … . The fact that Mourdock lost is not necessarily as big a message as the fact that Richard Lugar lost [to Mourdock in the primary] and every senator understands that.”

Few Republicans believe Plan B went down this week simply because of pressure from outside groups; there were complicated intra-caucus politics at play and a chaotic backdrop of negotiations with the White House.

Still, the rise of big-money outside groups changes the gravitational pressures on incumbent lawmakers at moments like this one. So far, traditional partisan institutions - including many elected officials themselves - have shown little ability to fight back against groups that take on Washington-anointed candidates from the right.

In that department, the Club is in a class by itself, operating in relative isolation and eschewing coordination with the larger world of Republicans super PACs and nonprofit political groups.

And while it has helped produce national GOP stars like Cruz and Rubio, the Club has also ushered into office far more marginal members, such as the trio of congressman – Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, David Schweikert of Arizona and Justin Amash of Michigan – who lost plum committee assignments as a result of their gadfly behavior in the House.

As both critics and supporters agree, the Club is utterly – some say self-indulgently – insensible to the tactical arguments for cut-our-losses proposals like Boehner’s Plan B.

In an email to POLITICO, Norquist shrugged at the notion that the Club and groups like it had effectively outflanked ATR on its ideological home turf.

“Various groups can suggest different strategies than those Boehner and [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell undertook. Free country (more or less),” Norquist said. “Everyone on the center/right understands that the House and Senate GOP leadership have as a goal maintaining the Bush tax cuts in toto and reducing Obama’s spending as much as possible. Everyone also understands that a [Democratic] White House and Senate limit the ability of pro-taxpayer congressmen and senators on the right to win everything today in one fell swoop.”

The common complaint about the Club is that it does not, in fact, accept that premise. Former New York Rep. and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds, said the Club had grown increasingly confrontational and tightly wedded to uncompromising “idealistic positions” that serve as “red meat to the donors.”

“Their media vendors and fundraisers are more interested in driving up the dough that makes people send out an ideological message, instead of finding tough solutions that both sides are going to have to come to grips with,” Reynolds said. “I am a conservative Republican, but I’m pragmatic.”

One senior Republican operative noted that the Club isn’t in the business of going after unbeatable opponents, and said lawmakers should “take responsibility for their own campaigns” to try and deter primary challenges. But the same strategist questioned whether it would ever be possible for establishment-side party institutions to accommodate the Club and other groups like it.

“All these guys, they make money when they attack Republicans. That’s just the bottom line,” the strategist said. “If they stopped doing that, they wouldn’t really be in business.”

With the 2014 cycle barely underway, the Club for Growth has already hinted at one target for the GOP primary season: West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, the moderate Republican running for Senate there. Chocola said it’s far too early to start picking candidates to endorse or oppose, but has also pointed to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham as an incumbent of interest to conservative donors.

The forces propping up establishment-bashing outside groups are more than commercial. If the Club helped pioneer big-money, heavily ideological primary politics in the early 2000s, it is far from the only entity playing that game today.

Even groups that can count on a virtually unlimited revenue stream, such as the Koch-backed AFP, view philosophy rather than party politics as their primary motivator.

AFP president Tim Phillips, emphasizing that his group’s opposition to Plan B wasn’t “vitriolic,” said he saw little value in the “technical arguments” that partisans like Norquist made in support of Boehner.

“We’re going to hold people accountable and we have a history of spending money and showing grassroots strength. We just don’t issue ultimatums or threats or anything like that,” he said. “We’re going to continue in a very similar vein. We’ve spent money at times holding Republicans accountable, spending money in their districts.”

“I still do not believe Republicans understand that they have more leverage than they think they have,” Phillips insisted. “I’m telling you, this president is weaker than he was at this moment four years ago.”

Chocola shares that sense of frustration and declined to cheer the demise of Boehner’s proposed fiscal deal.

“Plan B was never going to be the law. It was never going to be the final deal. And we were never smart enough to see how it got you to a good deal,” he said. “We don’t think it’s a good week. We think it’s a bad week. No one’s offering a pro-growth solution to the fiscal cliff issue.”