Tea Party Anger Still A Double-Edged Sword For GOP Leadership

Politico has an interesting story this week about tea partiers taking on entrenched GOP incumbents with primary challengers in 2010. With rhetoric similar to we've been hearing from folks like Chuck Purgason and Liz Lauber, tea party-supported candidates are challenging establishment Republicans for "what they perceive as the GOP’s stubborn insistence on embracing candidates who don’t abide by a small government, anti-tax conservative philosophy."

Whether it’s the loose confederation of Washington-oriented groups that have played an organizational role or the state-level activists who are channeling grass-roots anger into action back home, tea party forces are confronting the Republican establishment by backing insurgent conservatives and generating their own candidates — even if it means taking on GOP incumbents...

“It’s an outgrowth of the frustration people have had with the Republican Party,” said Andrew Moylan, director of governmental affairs for the National Taxpayers Union, another group that has played a large role in organizing the tea party movement. “I think a lot of people have been angry at Republicans for betraying our trust.”

This tension has played itself out locally in the 2nd and 8th Congressional Districts, where Liz Lauber and Bob Parker are challenging Todd Akin and Jo Ann Emerson, respectively. The Daily Journal outlined Parker's platform Sunday, which focuses in part on Emerson's support of the Wall Street bailout:

Parker said the influence multi-national and international corporations have on Congress concerns him. He decided he would campaign against Emerson because of her votes in favor of bailing out Wall Street financial firms. (Emerson voted in favor of the bailout in the fall, but voted against the second half of the plan in February.)

"I think our founding fathers would probably have picked up arms by now, given what’s going on in Washington right now," Parker said.

Parker's outrage mirrors that of the angry tea partiers quoted in the Politico story noted above.  From that story:

In a handful of states, tea party activists have zeroed in on House Republican incumbents and have launched primary challenges in protest of their past support for the controversial Wall Street bank bailout...

"I think it was a bad, bad political decision," [Dick] Armey said of the 34 Senate Republicans and 91 House Republicans who voted for the TARP bailout, "and if you talk to grass-roots activists, it has become a political test for them."

Moylan agreed that TARP is "really kind of the flash point that started all of this."

"People are paying attention and are willing to hold these people accountable," he said.

At the same time, it remains to be seen how Missouri's tea partiers will line up and demonstrate their displeasure with the GOP establishment and Roy Blunt, who's violated just about all of the partiers' professed values:  he the #3 House leader during the years that Republicans grew government spending and deficits, never figured out a way to pay for new government programs like the Medicare Part D benefit, and was the leader of the House Republican efforts to pass the TARP bill last year.  Blunt didn't just vote for the TARP legislation -- he was one of the key GOP leaders begging his colleagues to change their votes:

Party leaders in the House need 12 lawmakers to switch, assuming other votes stay the same. Mr. Hoyer is pressing Republican leaders to deliver 100 votes, half the Republican caucus.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) and others in the Republican leadership were putting pressure on lawmakers in telephone conversations Wednesday.

Stay tuned.

Image credit: Washington Times