January 22, 2010 02:38 AM UTC

"Tea Party" a Weapon in Red-On-Red Senate Infighting

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last week, a total of seven Republican state senators voted against the “Race to the Top” enabling legislation, SB10-036–Mike Kopp, Scott Renfroe, Ted Harvey, Dave Schultheis, Bill Cadman, Kevin Lundberg and Greg Brophy. But the Senate Minority was far from unanimous voting to take Colorado out of the running for hundreds of millions of federal education dollars, and this has set off a furious round of intra-GOP acrimony.

According to sources, at least three of the Republicans who voted no on the bill called their respective “Tea Party” contacts–we’ve not confirmed, but we’ve heard it was Brophy, Schultheis and Lundberg–and told them that the Republicans who voted for the bill (list helpfully provided)  “sold out to the teacher’s union.”

Over the weekend, many Republicans who voted for the bill were reportedly slammed with irate, with a few veering closer to creepy, phone calls castigating them for their vote. Furious about being thrown under the bus by their peers, Sen. Keith King on Tuesday morning allegedly demanded to know who did this–even going so far as to threaten the future leadership prospects of Republican caucus members who call in the “Tea Party” mob on their own.

Depending on whether or not Schultheis and friends decide to make a habit of this (it’s not like the retiring Schultheis can be threatened), we could be witnessing the beginning of a new and rather unpleasant chapter in GOP party comity…