Who's Bigger: Senate Tea Partiers or GOP Centrists?

The GOP Senate Tea Party caucus may grab the headlines, but the moderate GOP Main Street Caucus has the members.

The GOP Main Street Caucus has more members in the Senate (4) than the Tea Party caucus does.

At Politico, Manu Raju and Scott Wong write:

[S]o far, the entire group consists of just three outspoken conservative senators: Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Several senators have declined invitations to join, some are holding out because they are unsure about what the new group will do and others seem to think the caucus is an all-around bad idea that could send mixed messages on what Republicans stand for.

'I would hope what they would do is just think about the fact that they are brand-new to the Senate and we got a Republican Conference and they need to see how the conference works before you jump out and start saying, 'Well the tea party position says this,' Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) told Politico. ...

Some Republican senators complain that the caucus could amplify divisions within their party rather than present a united front. Others say there's little point to joining such a group, because individual senators wield enormous clout by themselves. Yet some are worried that if they choose not to join the caucus, they may be tarred by political opponents as insufficiently pure to the conservative cause.

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