Campaign Notes: It's tea time, seriously

By John Barron

It seems Democrats, Republicans, most pundits, and Washington insiders have all proclaimed the Tea Party the winner of the recent debt ceiling standoff — just about everyone, that is, other than the Tea Partiers themselves.

Attorney Ryan Hecker was among the activists keeping the heat on members of Congress who have thus far enjoyed the backing of the anti-tax movement.

“I don’t feel like a big winner,” he tells me from his office in Houston, “because all we’ve done is cut spending around the edges. We haven’t made any structural changes to the spending culture of Washington DC.”

How does he feel about the Tea Party being likened to hobbits by John McCain and terrorists by Joe Biden?

“It feels great,” Hecker tells me, “Two years ago when we started we were treated like jokes, we were seen as racists… but right now we’ve had a huge impact in the 2010 elections and now inside DC negotiations and inside Congress, and that shows we are making a huge impact.”

The next test of how seriously political insiders should be taking the Tea Party will come in the form of the Republican Straw Poll on Saturday August 13th in Ames, Iowa.

The founder of the Congressional Tea Party caucus Michele Bachmann has surged to the lead in the first-to-vote state, and other Tea Party favourites, like their spiritual father Ron Paul and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, are expected to also do well.

For Bachmann, a win in Ames will put her odds-on to win Iowa’s caucuses next February, and then she and the Tea Party will have to be taken very seriously indeed.

Washington is a town with more back-flippers than the Cirque de Soleil, and amid all that double-jointed pragmatism, the GOP’s House freshmen class of 2010 proved rigid to the point of rigor mortis. As a potential debt default loomed, they demanded Congress and the White House agree to slash spending by a trillion dollars over ten years and not ask a red cent in extra taxes to help bring down the deficit.

That deal was worse than Democrats feared and better than most Republicans dared dream, yet these Tea Partiers still aren’t satisfied — just as they won’t be satisfied in 2012 with a presidential candidate or a president who isn’t conservative enough.

“I think our main effort is going to be taking over the Senate,” Ryan Hecker tells me, “so that even if President Obama were to win, we would have both houses of Congress… and to ensure that the Republicans that are picked in the primaries are true economic conservatives.”

His comment raises an interesting question: Will Tea Partiers find a sense of pragmatism and get behind an establishment candidate in Romney, Perry, or Pawlenty, or could the Tea Partiers really give Bachmann — or even Ron Paul — the nomination?

And how much of a poisoned chalice would the Presidency be for a progressive like Obama or a moderate like Romney if the Tea Party rules both houses of Congress?

2 August 2011