Tea Party Turns on Debt Compromisers
There goes another lazy narrative. Fifty-nine Republican House freshmen voted ‘yes’ last evening on a debt ceiling compromise, making up about 68% of the freshmen class. In the 60-member tea party caucus led by Rep. Michele Bachmann, 53% voted in favor of the compromise.
But what will be the consequences of a ‘yes’ vote on the compromise deal?
Those who voted in favor of the debt ceiling deal will have a mark against them in the ever-increasing number of Congressional ratings.
Heritage Action, the activist sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, put out a ‘key vote alert’ yesterday opposing the debt ceiling deal:
“Heritage Action opposes the Budget Control Act of 2011 and will include votes in both the Senate and the House as key votes in our scorecard."
Similarly, the Tea Party National Congressional Scorecard will mark as pass/fail every Congressman in the 112th Congress, and the “debt ceiling giveaway” is a ‘fail’, said Tom Trento, the National Security Chairman for the Tea Party National Convention, and the person who runs the grading system.
FrumForum contacted the American Conservative Union, the creators of the ACU Congressional Ratings, and was told that no decision has been made yet on whether the vote will be included in their calculations. The ACU lifetime ratings are often used by candidates hoping to use the indicator as a sign of their adherence to conservative values.
Further, conservative groups are already calling for those who voted for the debt ceiling compromise to be challenged in a primary.
The Tea Party National Convention this fall "will focus on recruiting conservative primary challengers to guilty House GOP RINOs and frosh,” said Trento.
The debt ceiling compromise was “political suicide,” said Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, after the vote. “We put them in power and now we’re asking ourselves, ‘Why did we do that?’”
In addition, The Hill reported yesterday that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who had previously promised that he would not endorse opponents to fellow Republican senators, might change his mind because of his outrage over the terms of the debt ceiling deal.
“He's already opened the door to changing that policy in terms of supporting people in primaries — this deal could bring him to the point where he says he's not going to make any guarantees," said The Hill’s source.
In the end, the reward for spending months trying to work out a deal and withdrawing the United States from the brink of an economic calamity may well be a primary challenge from the right, and quite possibly a ticket home.
For example, Rep. Allen West, seen by many as a tea party favorite, was among those who voted in favor of the compromise bill – and now he’s being targeted by tea party groups who see him as a sell-out.
"One minute they're saying I'm their Tea Party hero, and three, four days later I'm a Tea Party defector; that kind of schizophrenia I'm not going to get involved in it," West said in consternation on Laura Ingraham's talk radio show.
