When an outside group announced it would spend $400,000 in ads pressuring Republicans who voted last week against the three-week continuing resolution for the Department of Homeland Security, it created a problem for House Speaker John Boehner.
The organization, American Action Network, is run by a former chief of staff to Boehner, and so the ads were perceived as an attack by a Boehner proxy on members of the GOP conference.
“The speaker has nothing but disdain for the people in our group,” one member of the House Freedom Caucus, the group that provided most of the GOP opposition to the three-week CR. “They’re out saying worse things about us than they’re ever saying about President Obama.”
The Club for Growth PAC took it the same way. “[W]hen the House Speaker’s Super PAC chooses to attack conservatives in the House for taking a stand on the principles they believe in, that is a matter of concern to us,” said Club for Growth President David McIntosh. “We have a message for those House Republicans who might be targeted: if the Speaker of the House attacks you for standing up for economic freedom and limited government, the Club for Growth PAC will have your back.”
Boehner disliked the ads, according to an aide. “We are forbidden by law from coordinating with outside political groups, but the speaker does not think that these ads are helpful,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel tells National Review.