After tea party intransigence brought the United States dangerously close to default, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce indicated that it will take on loyalists to the conservative movement.
Citing a need for serious elected officials, Scott Reed, a senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told Bloomberg in a story published Thursday that it plans to get involved in next year’s midterms.
“We are going to get engaged,” Reed said. “The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.”
The just-resolved budget and debt crises exposed a schism on the right between tea partiers and and big business. Polls showed that tea party voters largely dismissed the threat of default, while a group of conservative Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill said that hitting the debt ceiling wouldn’t have been problematic.
Those sentiments were at odds with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which supported the deal to re-open the government and raise the debt ceiling.
