The Republican establishment in the House is offering up a big old bear hug to the incoming class of tea party freshmen.
No matter where you go these days, you’ll find establishment types on the Hill praising their tea party brethren. There’s a good reason for that: if you believe the tea party rhetoric, Republicans have more to fear from the tea party than the Democrats ever did.
Though it was Democrats who the tea party successfully helped remove from power in the House, the GOP may have reason to worry, too. As longtime Republican insider Mike Castle — among others — learned over the summer, tea party-style change can be painful for establishment types.
So the House has set off to open the door to the tea party through praise and even a seat at the leadership table.
On Monday, plans for a new leadership spot in the Republican House hierarchy started trickling out to the press. The House GOP leaders lost a tea party favorite when Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) left his position as GOP conference chair, and most Republicans don’t seem interested in backing Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) bid to take his place.
Instead, the House GOP leadership appears to have decided to embrace one of the new faces of the tea party Congress. Freshly-elected Rep. Krisi Noem (R-SD) is the expected frontrunner for a new leadership slot, which will be filled by a freshman. Noem is pretty much perfect: telegenic and “brimming with Tea Party credibility,” as her hometown TV station put it recently.
Putting a tea partier right in the leadership could give establishment figures like expected Speaker John Boeher and Majority Leader Eric Cantor room to negotiate without tea party insurgency. Not that much of an insurgency is expected: both men have been praising the tea party just as much if not more after the election than they did on the campaign trail, when tea party anger was the fuel that stocked the Republican party win.
In his post-election victory lap op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Boehner laid out an agenda for the next Congress that held close to tea party messaging. A suggestion about “reading the bills” was high on the list, for example.
And Cantor is busy offering his praise to the movement as well.
“I’ve always thought of the tea party as representing America,” he told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren this week. “They played a huge role in helping get Republicans elected.”
Cantor and Boehner aren’t tea partiers, but it seems obvious that they’re working hard to narrow the distance between them and the movement that put them where they are today. The Republican leadership might have just a hint of tea in it with Noem, but it’s clear that the Republican-controlled House will do its best not to turn its back on the movement that shaped its current make up.
