WASHINGTON — A top Tea Party group practically declared war on the Republican Party establishment Monday, launching a super PAC to target GOP incumbents in Senate races who don’t meet its conservative standards.
In announcing the move, the Tea Party Patriots’ Super PAC put a bull’s-eye on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who already face tough re-election contests.
“Both Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell vote with President Obama more frequently than they vote the way the people in the Tea Party movement would want them to vote,” Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin, who is running the PAC, told The Post.
The senators’ offenses included voting to increase the debt limit, passing budgets with “huge deficits,” and failing to make the repeal of ObamaCare a priority, said Martin.
The Tea Party incursion in the races has rattled national GOP officials who fear it will destroy their chance of capturing a Senate majority this year.
The McConnell campaign declined to comment on his Tea Party problem.
The PAC, which is focusing on grass-roots organizing, also is eyeing key Senate races in Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Mississippi and Nebraska.
Martin said that the Tea Party can mobilize hundreds of thousands of activists that will make the PAC a force in both the primary and general elections.