Bachmann’s sudden fall exposes the reality of tea party players. Bachmann no force in Congress

Establishment Republicans have spent years tiptoeing around the tea party, concerned that its hot rhetoric and deep pockets could wreak havoc in their ranks and further disrupt the national party leadership’s carefully laid plans.

But Rep. Michele Bachmann’s sudden fall exposes the reality of tea party players: Their power in Congress is mostly a mirage.


Bachmann’s retirement marks a new chapter in congressional politics. Grass-roots stardom and piles of cash run aground on Capitol Hill, and might not even get you far with voters back home.

( Also on POLITICO: Bachmann's fall)

In six years in Congress, Bachmann was plainly unable to translate her cable-friendly bombast into traditional Washington power. And she couldn’t shake up the Republican establishment enough to convert her considerable resources into her own reservoir of muscle.

The Minnesota Republican never got a committee gavel. She managed one major legislative accomplishment — a bridge connecting Minnesota to Wisconsin. House GOP leadership didn’t place her on the Ways and Means Committee when they had the chance. The Tea Party Caucus — of which she was the public face — isn’t at all a force.

Here’s the image that Bachmann cut in the Capitol, according to several top level GOP aides and lawmakers interviewed by POLITICO on Wednesday: she was a sparse presence at GOP strategy meetings and didn’t particularly care about passing legislation. That bridge she helped build? She broke ground on it on Tuesday, one day before she announced her retirement, holding a shovel as she stood next to Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

Rock-ribbed, deep-pocketed conservatives who are favorites of the grass roots haven’t fared well of late — Bachmann is just the most recent example.

( PHOTOS: Michele Bachmann’s career)

South Florida voters booted Republican Rep. Allen West out of Congress in 2012, despite his hefty campaign war chest and frequent appearances on television. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an embodiment of the tea party movement, declined to run for a Senate seat in 2014. Instead, he’ll stay in the House, where, despite a decade of seniority, he wields a single subcommittee gavel. And even former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has struggled to translate his tea party heft to influence at The Heritage Foundation, where he’s had a rocky start. The group’s recent immigration critique wasn’t well received.

“There’s an established power structure in Washington, D.C. — be it Republican or Democrat — and you got gatekeepers, so you can be the champion with the people, with the grass roots. But there are folks that are the ones that are beholden to who gets to be the committee chairman or the subcommittee chairman or what have you,” said West, who recently set up shop in a Capitol Hill office after raising nearly as much money as Bachmann did for his 2012 election. “We all know that — I’m not revealing anything that no one has ever pondered or is not clearly evident to people.”

That’s not to say that the tea party didn’t shake up the political structure — in many ways it did. The House has been dragged far to the right and Speaker John Boehner’s hands have often been tied by rank-and-file conservatives. And with the once-in-a-decade redistricting making congressional seats even more polarized, most House Republicans occupy seats that are so conservative they’ll have to worry more about primaries than general elections. That incentivizes the kind of partisan rhetoric Bachmann mastered.

But Bachmann’s relevance — or lack therof — is rooted in an old D.C. culture. The currency of Washington power is still in chits and Bachmann never accumulated many. She wasn’t among the deal-cutters or kingmakers, despite their waning influence. High-profile antics — like offering an alternative to the leadership’s response to the president’s State of the Union address — rubbed some Republicans the wrong way.

Whether it was her own reelection to a district north of the Twin Cities, massive rallies in front of the Capitol, or her failed 2012 presidential campaign, aides and lawmakers say Bachmann has always been mostly about Bachmann.

Her congressional profile stands in stark contrast to powerful figures like Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who forgo weekends at home to raise money for colleagues across the country. Other tea party favorites have handled things differently. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) raised more than $14 million for the National Republican Congressional Committee’s March dinner, for instance.

Bachmann didn’t even tell her friends she was leaving Congress.

“I am surprised, shocked, and disappointed,” King wrote POLITICO in an email, noting that he hadn’t spoken to Bachmann but planned to. He added that Bachmann is a “a great friend and America is in her debt.”

Of course, the tea party has shown some success.

When DeMint was in the Senate, he emerged as a key power player, backing conservative candidates in primaries over establishment favorites. And Bachmann’s rhetorical impact will long be felt — GOP leadership slapped her name on its third full repeal of President Barack Obama’s health care law. But people who came to Washington to “shake things up” are finding that it’s more easily done outside the Capitol.

The Minnesota congresswoman found herself in political trouble for other reasons, too. She had a serious Democratic opponent with the ability to fund much of his campaign. And in recent weeks, she found herself boxed in by a swirl of investigations into her campaign finances. She will be on trial in 2014 on a civil claim that her political organization stole an email list.

Bachmann’s aides said she would serve out the remainder of her term — as opposed to resigning — and pointed to a quote in the congresswoman’s Wednesday announcement in which the Minnesotan said: “Feel confident, over the next 18 months, I will continue to work 100 hour weeks and I will continue to do everything that I can to advance our conservative constitutional principles that have served as the bedrock for who we are as a nation.”

CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to state that Rep. Steve King wields one subcommittee chairmanship instead of no chairmanships.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Kourtney Geers @ 05/30/2013 02:45 PM CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to state that Rep. Steve King wields one subcommittee chairmanship instead of no chairmanships.