Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took on the Tea Party once before — and lost. Six months after backing an establishment Republican over Sen.-elect Rand Paul in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell is now at odds with the Tea Party over earmarks.
Yesterday two major players in Tea Party politics — Dick Armey-led FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Patriots — declared their support for a two-year earmark moratorium. The groups have asked their members to contact Republican senators in hopes of swaying Tuesday’s vote.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) will offer the earmark moratorium proposal, identical to one supported by House Republicans, at a closed-door meeting of GOP caucus. The vote will be conducted by secret ballot. Fourteen senators have declared their support, 10 short of a majority.
The issue of government spending resonated with Tea Party activists and motivated many to support Republicans at the polls on Election Day. In fact, six moratorium supporters are freshmen senators who won with Tea Party help. Yet less than two weeks after the GOP landslide, establishment Republicans are waging an aggressive campaign to save earmarks.
The effort is being led publicly by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), whose defense of pork-barrel spending stands in stark contrast one of the Tea Party’s signature issues. Inhofe has op-eds in Politico and National Review Online today supporting earmarks. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) rebuts many of Inhofe’s arguments in a Washington Post op-ed today.
Yet for all of Inhofe’s efforts — and the private lobbying by McConnell and his leadership allies — Tea Party leaders don’t appear to be budging. Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler said his conversation with Inhofe was “bizarre.”
The pro-earmark senators also failed to sway FreedomWorks, a powerhouse in Tea Party politics. Armey, a former Republican congressman from Texas, wrote to his supporters yesterday to alert them about the earmark moratorium.
“This is the first test of the Tea Party movement’s resolve,” Armey wrote. “We must apply the same energy we unleashed in the elections to holding these soon-to-be promise-breakers to their word.”
This isn’t the first time McConnell has taken on the Tea Party. He endorsed Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson over Paul in Kentucky’s Republican primary. Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), was a strong Tea Party ally who went on to trounce Grayson in what was widely considered a repudiation of the GOP establishment.
Rob Bluey directs the Center for Media and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
