Freshmen shrugging off Tea Party primary threats over spending deal
By Shane D’Aprile - 04/14/11 06:00 AM ET
House Republicans aren’t worried about primary threats from Tea Party activists, who are unhappy with the level of spending cuts in the 2011 budget deal and the possibility of raising the debt limit.
Mark Meckler, co-founder of one of the nation’s largest Tea Party groups, said votes in favor of the budget deal and raising the debt ceiling will make for a toxic electoral combination for House Republicans.
“I’m literally getting emails by the hour from people talking about primary challenges,” Meckler, a leader of the Tea Party Patriots, said.
But freshman members of the House don’t appear concerned.
“It’s not that I’m not worried about them. And I would like to be all things to all people, but if you try to do that, you’re nothing to anybody. So I’m more inclined to just vote yes and move this in the right direction,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), a freshman lawmaker who’s a favorite of Tea Party activists back in his home district.
The conservative grassroots movement says opposition to the budget deal, which was negotiated late last week by congressional leaders and the White House, has increased in recent days. The proposal cuts $39.9 billion from current spending levels, but Tea Party activists were encouraging GOP leaders to shut down the government in order to get higher cuts.
They also don’t want Congress to raise the debt ceiling, arguing it would permit more borrowing by the federal government rather than dealing with the $14.3 trillion national debt.
But House freshmen said they’re not hearing complaints.
“I have to tell you, I’m not getting that negative feedback about this [budget] agreement. I’m really not,” Kelly said.
“The people that I’m talking to are saying, ‘Look, this is moving us in the right direction and that’s what we needed to see,’ ” he added. “Is it enough? No, it’s not enough. But unless I see something that’s overwhelmingly against everything I believe in, I’m voting for it.”
Meckler said local coordinators are organizing phone and email campaigns to lobby individual members to vote against the full budget compromise when it comes to the floor this week.
He also said activists on the state level are seeking out primary challengers for House Republicans who vote in support of the measure.
Blogger Erick Erickson summed up the conservatives’ frustration with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a post on RedState on Wednesday, writing that Boehner’s “leadership has been crap lately” and noting an increase in the number of phone calls and emails batting around the idea of challenging the Speaker in a primary.
Despite the bum deal on the budget, wrote Erickson, “John Boehner doesn’t need replacing, but he does need recalibrating.” He also warned that Boehner is “more conservative than [House Majority Leader] Eric Cantor [R-Va.], who’d most likely replace him.”
Meckler said that while no one’s truly sold on trying to oust the new Republican Speaker just yet, activists around the country are watching with an increasing level of concern.
“If John Boehner really thinks there’s no daylight between him and the Tea Party, he’s not looking,” said Meckler.
Kelly defended Boehner and the House leadership, saying: “As a rookie in this thing, I don’t know how you negotiate any better than what they’ve done.”
The discontent among conservatives hasn’t prevented the House GOP leadership from expressing optimism that their rank-and-file will overwhelmingly back the agreement.
Leaders expect defections won’t be as large as some have predicted. Cantor said earlier in the week that the House will pass the 2011 spending bill Thursday with “strong Republican support.”
Members of the freshman class seem to be backing their leaders.
“As much of a fiscal conservative as I am, you do have to accept the small victory sometimes before you get to the bigger victory,” said freshman Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), who has taken some heat from Tea Party activists back in his home district.
“It’s not something I worry about,” Grimm said of the potential for a primary challenge. “My job is to lead and to govern. If I wanted to just sit back and not be a member of Congress and just be a member of a Tea Party, well, then I can espouse whatever I want because there are no consequences.”
Grimm praised Tea Party activists in his home base on Staten Island as “very reasonable and rational,” but he added he would rather make progress “a little at a time” than simply oppose a measure because conservative activists are railing against it.
“Sure, the cuts could be larger,” said freshman Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.). “But my view is that we should go ahead and build this bridge and then work on the next one.”
Palazzo is one Republican who has dealt with conservative opposition: Last year, the candidate he defeated in a primary claimed the Tea Party mantle and then endorsed Democrat Gene Taylor in November’s general election.
“At the end of the day, [the Tea Party] is just gonna have to grade each one of their legislators on their performance,” Palazzo said. “If you expect us to agree with you 100 percent of the time, you might as well just go ahead and start pulling out primary candidates now and start vetting them.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who’s weighing a presidential run next year, sees it differently.
Bachmann has committed to voting against the long-term budget deal and says she will vote against raising the debt ceiling when the issue comes to the floor, too.
While Bachmann said she won’t “stand in judgment” of her colleagues, “What I hear from people all across the country is that they feel like they’ve been let down. They don’t see people fighting and they’re wondering, ‘Why are you rolling over?’ ”
Bachmann said she’s received “a ton” of calls into her office over the past few days thanking her for her stance against the budget agreement, and warned her fellow Republicans that they ain’t seen nothing yet.
“One thing that I thought, especially with the freshman class, is if they supported this early budget vote and they thought that was a tough vote — just wait until the debt-ceiling vote,” said Bachmann.
I notice NJ's Gov Chritie didn't do well in a recent NJ poll - 1:4 NJ voters would not vote Christie for president...NJ knows a bag of wind when they see it!!!
The Mother of All No-Brainers By DAVID BROOKS Published: July 4, 2011 comments (527)
The Republicans have changed American politics since they took control of the House of Representatives. They have put spending restraint and debt reduction at the top of the national agenda. They have sparked a discussion on entitlement reform. They have turned a bill to raise the debt limit into an opportunity to put the U.S. on a stable fiscal course.
Josh Haner/The New York Times David Brooks
Republican leaders have also proved to be effective negotiators. They have been tough and inflexible and forced the Democrats to come to them. The Democrats have agreed to tie budget cuts to the debt ceiling bill. They have agreed not to raise tax rates. They have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.
Moreover, many important Democrats are open to a truly large budget deal. President Obama has a strong incentive to reach a deal so he can campaign in 2012 as a moderate. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, has talked about supporting a debt reduction measure of $3 trillion or even $4 trillion if the Republicans meet him part way. There are Democrats in the White House and elsewhere who would be willing to accept Medicare cuts if the Republicans would be willing to increase revenues.
If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.
A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.
The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.
This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.
But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.
The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.
The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.
The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.
The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name. Economists have identified many factors that contribute to economic growth, ranging from the productivity of the work force to the share of private savings that is available for private investment. Tax levels matter, but they are far from the only or even the most important factor.
But to members of this movement, tax levels are everything. Members of this tendency have taken a small piece of economic policy and turned it into a sacred fixation. They are willing to cut education and research to preserve tax expenditures. Manufacturing employment is cratering even as output rises, but members of this movement somehow believe such problems can be addressed so long as they continue to worship their idol.
Over the past week, Democrats have stopped making concessions. They are coming to the conclusion that if the Republicans are fanatics then they better be fanatics, too.
The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.
If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.
And they will be right.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 5, 2011
An earlier version of this column misstated the amount of revenue increases needed in exchange for spending cuts. It is a few hundred billion, not a few hundred million.
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