Tea Party to Battle GOP Senators in 2012

Tea party activists are working to defeat Democrats in the November elections, but they are already setting their sights on unseating several Republican senators in 2012.

The targets: senators who have supported big government and higher spending, including Olympia Snowe and Richard Lugar.

Sen. Snowe of Maine supported President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill and was the only Republican to vote for his healthcare reform bill in the Senate Finance Committee. Conservative businessman Scott D’Amboise, who ran for the House in 2006, has already announced plans to challenge Snowe in 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In Indiana, Monica Boyer, president of Silent No More — a group that sympathizes with the tea party movement — says her group will begin searching for an opponent to Richard Lugar the day after the midterm elections.

“Tea party activists have put these and other incumbents on notice that the anti-establishment sentiment defining this year’s politics will not end on Election Day 2010,” according to the Journal.

The activists who oppose center-leaning Republicans have been emboldened by the primary victories of several tea party favorites who defeated mainstream Republicans, ousting Robert Bennett in Utah, Mike Castle in Delaware, and Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.

In response, the Journal reports, Republican legislators “are already taking steps to burnish their conservative credentials.”