Since the election, it has become abundantly clear that Sen. Jim DeMint has become the member of Congress who represents the agenda of the GOP's right-wing base and Tea Party movement.
Earlier this week, the Family Research Council announced that it was seeking one million people who were willing to pray for DeMint as takes on the Republican establishment and seeks to remake it in his own image.
And now Richard Viguerie and dozens of right-wing leaders are opening threatening the entire GOP establishment that they will seek to destroy any Republican who stands in DeMint's way:
Prominent conservative leaders are putting critics of Sen. Jim DeMint on notice: Stop blaming the South Carolina Republican for the GOP’s failure to take back the majority in the Senate -- or else.
Led by conservative icon Richard Viguerie, who heads the Web site ConservativeHQ.com, a group of three dozen high-profile DeMint backers, say they will respond to the senator’s detractors “in word and deed.”
“Conservatives will not only challenge and beat more Republican senators in Republican primaries, but conservatives will stop funding and volunteering for the NRSC and the RNC,” Viguerie wrote in a letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. “Instead, conservatives will send their money to, and volunteer for, Senator DeMint’s Senate Conservative Fund and the candidates Senator DeMint supports.”
And Viguerie and his counterparts didn’t stop there:
“It would be our goal for the Senate Conservatives Fund to raise more money than the NRSC,” the letter continues. “Conservatives will also work to defeat in Republican primaries those Republicans who retain consultants who criticize or try to undermine Senator DeMint.”
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In his letter Viguerie warned that “such false and unfair attacks aid and abet President Obama, the Democratic Party and the liberal media,” adding: “We consider such attacks on Senator Jim DeMint an attack on us and all conservatives.”
As of Friday the letter was co-signed by 36 leaders and the writers are seeking to double that number by Monday.
The Republicans made huge gains in the election just over a week ago ... and they are already at each others throats.