FreedomWorks chief Matt Kibbe said Friday that divisions on the right could cause the Republican Party to split in two.
During an apperance on CSPAN, the tea party leader responded to a piece in The Washington Times indcating that some “prominent Republicans are saying that if the GOP loses the 2016 presidential elections, the party will go the way of the Whigs — or formally split into a moderate party and a conservative party.”
“I think that’s a real possibility because you’re seeing this clash between the new generation and — to me, it’s not just the old wing of the Republican Party versus the new wing —you’re really seeing a disintermediation in politics. It’s already happened with the Democratic Party,” Kibbe said. “It’s happening with the Republican Party now. And grassroots activists have an ability to self-organize, to fund candidates they’re more interested in, going right around the Republican National Committee and senatorial committee.”
“That’s the new reality,” he continued. “Everything’s more democratized and Republicans should come to terms with that. They still wanna control things from the top down and if they do that, there will absolutely be a split. But my prediction would be that we take over the Republican Party and they go the way of the whigs.”
When host Peter Slen asked who he meant by “we,” Kibbe said, “We being actvists that believe in freedom.”
The recent budget and debt crises exposed a divide on the right. Tea party lawmakers and conservative activists supported the effort to gut the Affordable Care Act and largely opposed the deal that re-opened the government and raise the debt ceiling. RedState.com editor Erick Erickson wrote last week a “real third party movement” will split the party.
