Image via Shutterstock

A big factor in the Republican mid-term victories: Big Money.

And they vowed to pick up the beat again in 2016, even as the party’s conservative wing pledged costly and damaging primary battles in response — starting with the presidential race. “We’ve entered a season of bloody Republican primaries where conservatives try to pick off Republicans and where Republicans try to pour as much money into the primaries as possible,” said Erick Erickson, the conservative blogger who allied with tea party groups that challenged establishment Republicans.

Erickson has become a leading voice of the tea party resistance to an attempted quashing by the business wing of the GOP, which grew weary of the brinkmanship championed by conservative Republicans in Congress. He has consulted with like-minded donors and he said “most of the conservatives I talked to were rather shocked by how much the establishment was willing to spend.”