Strategy
Club for Growth is not an organization that is focused on short-term gains. They are notoriously cautious with their endorsements, giving out only a dozen or so each election cycle, and fanatically sticking to their core mission. While the organization is relatively new, only being formed in 1999, it has a number of success stories to tell. They currently boast a roster of 14 endorsed candidates that were elected to the U.S Senate, with 12 of them still serving as active members of the Senate(1). The strategy from the beginning has been to elect more free-market conservatives to Congress, and they have slowly been building on that success. However, the caution and their tactical choices of which races to target, has made that process painfully slow for some of their supporters. Their overall approach is to first target open seats in safe Republican districts, then to target insufficiently conservative Republicans in safe Republican districts, and finally any competitive seats held by Democrats(2). This incremental approach gives them the ability to go to their donors, prospective candidates, and existing legislators with victories, but it is also a very slow path to the overall strategic policy goals of the organization. The United States is no closer to eliminating Social Security, public education, the estate tax, or establishing a flat tax rate than we were when the organization was formed in 1999. They can point to a Ted Cruz and Rand Paul in the Senate, or a Jim Jordan in the House of Representatives to say that they are close to challenging for leadership positions, but none of that has materially happened.
If you asked a member of the general public what they think of Club for Growth, you may get mostly confused looks. If you ask an elected official in Washington D.C., you will get some grumbles but an overall feeling of begrudging acceptance. Mitch McConnel doesn’t love the organization, but he also knows they are someone he can count on in some Senate races even while he might be fighting them in others. There are some Republicans who hold more negative views, those who saw a Club endorsement of a flawed candidate lead to a Democratic victory in a particular race, but for the most part, they are an accepted part of the conservative ecosystem.
As we enter into the 2022 election cycle, this organization is presented with an opportunity unlike they’ve seen since its founding in 1999. At this point, less than a year before the next election, Republicans seem poised to win their biggest margins in several decades if not more. The Democratic party has largely been unable to deliver on almost any policy promises made to their base and it has left them incredibly weak heading into the midterm elections, even more so than the usual trend of the President losing seats in the cycle after being elected. The strategy for Club for Growth going into this environment is incredibly important for their long-term strategic goals. This is their first real opportunity to challenge for leadership in both chambers of Congress, if in fact Republicans win a majority in both. While it is almost certainly a given at this point that Kevin McCarthy would-be Speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell would be the majority leader in the Senate, there are numerous other party leadership roles and committee chair roles that can be held by Club endorsed legislators. This will also be an opportunity to target primaries of tenured Republicans that have been barriers to Club policy priorities with primaries in safe Republican districts. The 2018 and 2020 election cycles were almost outliers for the organization, in that they spent more money opposing Democrats than they did Republican incumbents. In 2022, I would expect them to return to previous spending trends and focus more of their funds on Republican incumbents that present institutional or ideological hurdles to their agenda. With a Republican wave in the forecast, they could make more gains in this cycle to the point they can begin challenging for leadership of the conference.
Footnotes:
Club for Growth Action: Conservative Super PAC. Club for Growth. (2020, June 4). Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://www.clubforgrowth.org/about/club-for-growth-action/.
BURNS, A. N. N. A. P. A. L. M. E. R. and A. L. E. X. A. N. D. E. R. (2014, April 7). Inside club for growth's art of war. POLITICO. Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/inside-the-club-for-growths-art-of-war-105415.