Boehner May Have More Leverage Over Tea Partiers in Congress

Posted on Nov 8, 2012

Flickr/Talk Radio News Service

John Boehner.

By Robert Reich

This post originally ran on Robert Reich’s Web page, www.robertreich.org.

“If there’s a mandate in yesterday’s results,” said House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday, “it’s a mandate to find a way for us to work together.” Republicans, he said, were willing to accept “new revenue under the right conditions,” to get a bipartisan agreement over the budget.

We’ve heard this before. The Speaker came close to agreeing to an increase in tax revenues in his talks with the President in the summer of 2011, but relented when Tea Partiers in the House made a ruckus.

But Tea partiers may be more amenable to an agreement now that the electorate has signaled it doesn’t especially like what the tea party has been up to.

Consider Indiana, where the tea party had pushed out veteran GOP Senator Richard Lugar in favor of Richard (rape is “something God intended”) Mourdock. Mourdouk was soundly defeated Tuesday by Rep. Joe Donnelly.

In Missouri, the tea party was responsible for Todd (some rapes are “legitimate”) Akin winning the Republican Senate nomination – which gave Sen. Claire McCaskill a landslide victory.

And in Montana, tea party nominee Denny Rehberg was no match for Senator Jon Tester.

Of the sixty incumbent members of the House’s Tea Party Caucus, 47 were reelected, while 6 lost big, two ended up in races far too close for comfort, and one is still hanging by a thread (the rest either retired or sought higher office). Overall, those are bad odds for House incumbents.

As of Thursday morning, tea party icon Florida’s Rep. Allen West — who made a name for himself calling several of his Democratic colleagues communists — was still trailing his Democratic opponent Patrick Murphy by more than the 0.5 percent margin that would trigger an automatic recount. Nonetheless, West is charging “disturbing irregularities” in the balloting process, and his lawyers have asked that ballots and voting equipment be impounded in St. Lucie and Palm Beach counties in expectation of a recount.

Another tea party icon, Minnesota’s Rep. Michele Bachmann, beat challenger Jim Graves by just over 3,000 votes out of nearly 350,000 votes cast — even though she outspent Graves by more than 12-to-one. Not a good omen for Bachmann in 2014.

Tuesday wasn’t exactly a repudiation of the Tea Party, and the public’s rejection of Tea Party extremism on social issues doesn’t automatically translate into rejection of its doctrinaire economics. But the election may have been enough of a slap in the face to cause Tea Partiers to rethink their overall strategy of intransigence. And to give Boehner and whatever moderate voices are left in the GOP some leverage over the crazies in their midst.

Robert B. Reich, chancellor’s professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective Cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including the best-sellers “Aftershock” and “The Work of Nations.” His latest, “Beyond Outrage,” is now out in paperback. He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

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