Jamie Radtke, a Republican Senate candidate in Virginia, addressed the first-ever Senate Tea Party Caucus meeting Thursday, calling for less government spending and lower taxes — and later arguing that the Senate record of her top challenger, George Allen, is out of step with Tea Party values. “Individual Americans, uncertain about their jobs, are wisely trying to reduce their debt and get their own houses back in order,” said Radtke, the former chairwoman of the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation. “But, collectively, Washington can’t see this simple wisdom.”
Radtke attended the Tea Party Caucus with a number of Republican senators already influential within the conservative political movement, including Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Radtke is the only Republican other than Allen to announce a 2012 challenge to Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., though others are expected to join.
Webb, who took the Senate seat away from Allen in 2006, said he would announce by April 1 whether he would see re-election.
With Tea Party credentials, Radtke is positioning herself to the political right of Allen by arguing that Allen violated Tea Party principles on limited government spending during his Senate term. She points to Allen’s votes on budgets that added $3.1 trillion to the national debt and a Bush-era program that expanded prescription drug benefits to seniors known as Medicare Part D.
“Trillion-dollar deficits, soaring debt, earmarks — that’s how George Allen voted in Washington,” Radtke said. “But those are the kind of politics Tea Partiers are standing against.”
Allen and his supporters maintain that he’s always been “anti-establishment,” and cited his solid ratings on issues like gun rights and abortion.
“George Allen is like the charter member of the Tea Party,” said a person close to Allen. “He has a rapport with that base that now calls themselves the Tea Party.”
