Posted on 05/17/2012 5:26:16 AM PDT by iowamark
There have been many studies out on the “tea party congress” and just how tea party it actually is. One study last year noted that 70% of candidates who went to Congress under the tea party banner were voting just like the Republican Leaders they ran against.
Probably one of the best places to get a sense of this is the Club for Growth. Why? The Club ignores social votes and focuses only on fiscal votes — spending issues more than anything else. The tea party candidates went to Congress not just to repeal Obamacare, but were really motivated by out of control government spending, bailouts, etc. Remember, it was Rick Santelli of CNBC on February 19, 2009, who predicted this grassroots army of activists would rise up and say enough to out of control government spending and bailouts. Santelli said, in part,
"The government is promoting bad behavior. Because we certainly don’t want to put stimulus forth and give people a whopping $8 or $10 in their check, and think that they ought to save it, and in terms of modifications… I’ll tell you what, I have an idea.
You know, the new administration’s big on computers and technology– How about this, President and new administration? Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages; or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road, and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water?
…
We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing."
Things sort of spiraled from there sending a wave of candidates to Washington embracing the concerns of the activists who showed up to the tea party.span id="more-15904">
They wanted to cut spending because of out of control debt, stop Barack Obama, end Obamacare, and they were willing to primary Republicans to do it. A number of Republicans lost. In some open primaries, the candidates who were supported by the GOP out of Washington went down in flames.
But what of the candidates who actually went to DC on a wave of tea party support. Turns out some of them were liars and a lot of them behaved like the pigs in Animal Farm with some of them deciding they were more equal than others.
The Club for Growth’s new study of this Tea Party Congress paints a rather depressing picture. You can see how the freshman of the Tea Party Class of 2010 preformed by clicking right here.
If you want a more in depth look at the Congress as a whole, one of the best places to go is Heritage Action for America’s comprehensive score card. What you’ll find is not much better there.
I’m afraid if the tea party is not much more successful in primarying Republican candidates and then having those guys practice what they preach, the GOP is within a decade of going the way of the Whigs.
Big surprise.
It is reported today that Boehner held a closed door Republicans strategy meeting to plot out the course after the SCOTUS rules on Obama-care:
Plan A) If Obama-care is fully thrown out House Republicans will put up bills to re-impose the popular costly mandates on insurance companies such as pre-existing conditions, without a personal mandate, that is disaster A
Plan B) If Obama-care is upheld then the House will put up bills to strip out the unpopular parts, like the personal mandates and and taxes and leave in the popular handouts and mandates.
These would be pretty poor policies but I am assuming that they are counting on those bills dying in the Senate.
While this has not been made public I couldnt help notice it's exactly what I expected.
source?
It’s a leak. It was a closed door meeting.
But if the vote comes down to supporting the Rep-E led Congress at the end after trying in the system for less spending, etc, but failing, they will vote accordingly rather than supporting the Dems, which wold be the only other option. This study only looks at the final result, not the actions that take place during the “sausage-making” of committee hearings, mark-ups, etc. just not enough to make the substantial changes, given the fact that Boener runs the House, and his cronies are committee heads.
Anyone who expected every Tea Party congressman to stay true to our ideals was an ignorant, political juvenile.
This is a looooong process where we will keep weeding out the inferior politicians in favor of new blood, even if those inferior politicians ran under the Tea Party banner.
The only goal of this story is to depress and destroy the Tea Party.
When the “results” defy common sense...
Check the markings on the yardstick!
Metrics are usually poorly designed to achieve meaningful measurements,
OR
INTENTIONALLY designed to deceive.
Some of the better-known tea party frosh:
98% Ben Quayle
92% Tim Scott
64% Allen West
60% Kristi Noem
58% Sean Duffy
56% Adam Kinzinger
What, we shouldn’t hold individual lawmakers responsible for the patterns of their votes?
Who are you, Sen. Lugar’s chief of staff?
John McCain has a better score than Allen West.
Boehner definitely played them, giving them their symbolic votes and afterward getting them to vote for the Obama-Boehner compromises which did go into law.
The Debt limit/deficit reduction bill is the worse example of this shameless effective strategy.
The symbolic votes are just for primary protection purposes.
Some folks here (and Sarah Palin) are still big fans of West, but I’ve been quite disappointed with him.
That's because a lot of FReepers are gullible and easily-led, and are more attracted to loudly-made public pronouncements than they are interested in looking at a candidate's actual record.
This also explains the sudden rush to "reimagine" Mitt Romney as conservatism's great paladin and its last, best hope.
This is simply more evidence that, despite the naysaying from some quarters here on FR, I am correct in my assertion that the only way to effectively deal with the problem is for conservatives to band together in dumping the GOP and creating a new organization for political action.
Trying to work within the present system won’t work because it’s players are too entrenched. The only way to unentrench them is to sap the dirt out from under their trenches.
If you need any more evidence that the rating system is flawed...
And the source for the “leak”?
The only one I’ve seen is Pollutico.
This popped up this morning:
Report: GOP might keep parts of ObamaCare if law is struck down
McCain’s a pretty fiscally conservative voter but possibly votes should be weighted in this as not all votes are equal.
” RE :”There have been many studies out on the “tea party congress” and just how tea party it actually is. One study last year noted that 70% of candidates who went to Congress under the tea party banner were voting just like the Republican Leaders they ran against.”
Trent Lott and McConnell did their job well..
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