John Boehner's growing Tea Party headache

By R.K. Barry

There were a number of stories over the past few days about how disappointed various Tea Party factions were in the Republican leadership for the budget deal negotiated with the devil himself, a.k.a. the President of the United States.

Not to get into a big thing about "who won" the budget negotiations, or how much money is really being cut, because that's being covered by a lot of people - as interesting a discussion as it is.

What amazed me was the attitude of some of the Tea Party spokesmen. Not that I'm in the habit of feeling sorry for Speaker Boehner, but he does find himself riding quite the beast.

My favourite comment came from someone by the name of Doug Mainwaring, a "real estate agent and local conservative activist from Bethesda, Maryland." Mr. Mainwaring opined that "I'm not sure they (the GOP) have the political willpower to accept the mandate that was handed them by the Tea Party last November."

Elections are won for all kinds of reasons, usually with votes by majorities cobbled together from all sorts of voting blocs, so for the Tea Party to actually think they fully and completely call the tune for the Republicans is, well, just a lot of fun to watch. To put a fine point on it: successful political parties have to keep all manner of constituencies happy and pandering to the loudest to the exclusion of the others is a clear way to lose the next election.

The best part, as the Huffington Post reported, was that:

The budget deal passed the House by a comfortable margin, by a vote of 260 to 167. A total of 59 Republicans voted against the deal, but according to ABC's Jon Karl, only 27 of those no votes came from freshman House Republicans, who comprise the bulk of the conference's Tea Party component.

It seems that even those politicians most closely aligned with the Tea Party have no idea from whom they are supposed to be taking their marching orders. Mostly it seems that the Tea Party is really just a bunch of people who find themselves in front of a camera or talking to a reporter when the media need someone from the radical right to express the appropriate amount of indignation at any given moment in time.

That's hardly any way to run a political party and John Boehner knows it.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost)