There are signs that the conservative Tea Party movement has pushed other Republicans in the U.S. Congress too far and that a counter-revolt may be brewing. The clearest signal came on Monday evening, when more pragmatic Republicans moved to crush efforts by a trio of Tea Party-backed Senators - Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Marco Rubio - to paralyze the Senate unless they get their way on the government funding bill that scuttles President Barack Obama's healthcare law. The tactic of using the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare had already come under a barrage of public criticism from Republican voices. They include more than a dozen Republican senators, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, strategists Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt, who advised Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign against Obama. "For the last couple of years," Schmidt said on MSNBC on Monday, "we've had this wing of the party running roughshod over the rest of the party" saying "'we're going to purge, you know, the moderates out of the party.'" Read more http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-government-shutdown-20130924,0,2626124.story
