Wickham: Tea Party launches second civil war

DeWayne Wickham | USATODAY

JACKSON, Miss. -- Welcome to the Republican civil war, Mississippi division.

Tea Party linked activist groups have already fired the first salvo in the fight for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Thad Cochran. By campaigning to unseat Cochran, the Senate's second-longest serving Republican, they threaten to turn the skirmishes with the GOP mainstream into full-fledged combat.

So far, Cochran hasn't announced whether he will seek re-election in a state in which the GOP nomination for a U.S. Senate seat is tantamount to being elected. But if he decides to run for a seventh term, the fight for the GOP nomination could shape up to be the Republican's Party's Battle of Bull Run. The early GOP Senate primary warring in Indiana, Delaware and Colorado took place on the fringe of the Republican heartland. The fight unfolding in Mississippi is at its core.

Already, television commercials paid for by Tea Party-linked activist groups backing the six-term senator's only announced opponent have started airing. One by the Virginia-based Senate Conservatives Action has branded GOP state Sen. Chris McDaniel "the rightful heir" to Cochran. Another by the Club for Growth, a Washington, D.C. group with strong Tea Party ties, called McDaniel "a constitutional conservative with backbone" – an apparent slap at Cochran because he joined 26 other Republican senators in voting last month to end the government shutdown.

With similar conflicts brewing in several other states, the fratricide could determine whether the Republican Party will remain a national political force, or succumb to its self-inflicted wounds and be reduced to a historical footnote. What's certain is that with nearly eight months to go before Mississippi's GOP primary, the Tea Party challenge to Cochran has opened up an important new front in the Republicans' infighting.

"There's definitely a war going on in the Republican Party, and I think the ultraconservative message of the Tea Party has gotten some traction here," Otha Burton Jr., executive director of the Institute of Government at Jackson State University, told me. "If (McDaniel) challenges Cochran and wins, it will cause a panic button to sound for the Republican Party's establishment."

For some mainstream Republicans, that alarm has already gone off.

"I think it is a losing strategy, because the public knows what Cochran's done," Haley Barbour -- a former Mississippi governor and onetime chairman of the Republican National Committee -- said during a recent interview with the The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger. "But you've got a bunch of money from New York and all over from these groups that are putting up all the money, and they are led by people who have said, 'We would rather have 30 pure conservative senators than the majority.' Well, I'd rather have the majority, so that conservatives can make the policies that set the direction for the country."

While some would say this fight is over ideological purity, it can be more accurately described as a conflict between conservatives who want to govern and those who seek to dictate. The Tea Party activists' unwavering stand-your-ground approach to politics leaves no room for compromise. They use the democratic process to stifle democracy.

Mainstream Republicans are not so cynical in their approach to government. While, like Democrats, they manipulate the levers of government to their advantage, they usually accept compromise when the alternative is a crippling stalemate. That's why Cochran joined with a majority of Senate Republicans and Democrats in voting to end the government shutdown, which had been hoisted upon the nation by the GOP's Tea Party wing.

It was right after that vote was cast that McDaniel announced his challenge to Cochran -- and opened up this new front in the Republican Party's civil war.

DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.

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