The Republican and tea party agenda is driving the debate over reshaping government. | AP Photos The GOP's winning streak

Here’s the unvarnished pitch House Speaker John Boehner would love to make to his conservative critics if he could just let it fly: “You are winning, and winning decisively. So stop your whining.”

And here’s the unvarnished truth about that pitch: Boehner would be spot on.


The winners and losers of this weekend’s 11th-hour budget deal may be in dispute. But the broader trajectory of politics, stretching back to the spring of 2009, is not. The Republican — and, yes, the tea party — agenda is not only ascendant, it’s driving the debate over reshaping government at every level.

Jubilant top Republicans told POLITICO in interviews that they plan to use the momentum from the budget fight to take a hard line with President Barack Obama in the fiscal fights of the months ahead. And the GOP leaders said they believe their new advantage in the national debate will lift the party’s presidential candidates — none of whom right now looks capable of beating Obama.

“The debate is now on our side of the field,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said from Sioux Falls. “This is just the opening act. But these upcoming debates are not going to be about whether we’re going to reduce the cost and size of government, but how much. That’s very good ground for Republicans to fight on.”

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a 2012 presidential hopeful, told us: “When you see [Democratic governors] Jerry Brown [of California] and you see Andrew Cuomo [of New York] wrestling with spending, and inevitably wrestling with the unions who elect them, you know you’re in a different era.”

Obama himself seems to be responding to the GOP's push, with his senior adviser David Plouffe announcing Sunday that the president will deliver a major speech Wednesday laying out a more aggressive path for deficit reduction — including reform of entitlements, particularly Medicare and Medicaid.

Make no mistake, Obama did pretty well last week during the budget fight. Like any good politician, he’s sure to take credit for cutting spending, too, even though he fought it much of the way. It’s no accident he said the deal marked the biggest annual spending cut in history — not once, but twice, in four minutes of remarks after the agreement was reached. And the Democrats’ relentless criticism of the GOP’s effort to make gains on social issues – abortion in particular – may yet yield political dividends.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote in a Saturday blog post: “These are real cuts that will save taxpayers money and have a real impact. Many will be painful, and are to programs that we support, but the fiscal situation is such that we have to act.”

And a senior Democrat involved in the conversations argues: "The GOP got a high number, but they utterly failed at their real objective —overturning the Obama agenda. On health care, clean air, women's health and education — and every other core area of the Obama administration — they failed and failed miserably to turn back the clock. Boehner blinked."

But even Democrats recognize Republicans have the offensive on the spending issue — that they own it in a way Obama simply can’t. A top Democratic official, insisting on anonymity in order to be candid, said: “The fundamental problem of the whole process is Democrats have zero ability to describe what our view of government really is. So basically all we do is defend the status quo against attacks from the right-wing fringe of the GOP.”

Look at the facts:

—The $40 billion in cuts was not only historically high, it was more than Boehner himself wanted to push for a few short months ago.

—Earmarks, which many thought would never go away, are now taboo - even to earmark addicts like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who reluctantly gave them up after the 2010 election.

—Deficits are all the rage on Capitol Hill, and will be until Congress wends its way through the debt limit fight and the next budget. The word “deficit” appeared in 470 documents in the Congressional Record between the beginning of January and the end of March, more than in any session’s opening since 1995, according to a review by POLITICO. And Americans listened: Asked by Gallup to identify the most important problem facing the nation, 13 percent said “federal debt” in March of this year, up from 8 percent a year ago.

—The broader budget debate is now fought on the tea party’s terms: It’s not whether to reduce government, it’s by how much. This helps explain why serious centrist commentators and even some liberals PRAISED a $6 trillion budget cut plan proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). Remember how a similar plan was received two years ago?

—Thanks to a pickup of 675 legislative seats in 2010 - many because of these budget principles — the most sweeping work is getting done in states. Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana are now working, real-time labs for discovering how much the party can cut government - without cutting off the support of independents. A GOP senator told us the party studies what happens in these state showdowns to test the limits of what will work here. One early finding: Many think Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) went too far, too fast by gutting union power without first educating the public.

—The real fight over spending erupted in late spring of 2009, and consider the results: The GOP won the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey in 2009; the Scott Brown Senate race in Massachusetts in early 2010; then won back the House, picked up Senate seats and captured the most state legislative seats in a single year since Watergate — all in November of last year.

“The country knows it’s in serious trouble,” Gingrich said. “You see this with Scott Walker, you see it with John Kasich [in Ohio], you see it with Rick Scott [in Florida], you see it with Chris Christie [in New Jersey], you see it with Mitch Daniels [in Indiana].”

House Republican leadership aides, emboldened by the outcome of this budget fight, told us they plan to force more spending cuts, plus budget reforms, as the price of Republican votes to support the administration on raising the nation’s debt limit – a debate expected to take place in May and June, and possibly backing up into July.

The aides argue that the GOP is the minority party in Washington, since Democrats control the White House and the Senate. So they said they will have to be very strategic and continue focusing on the big picture of the nation’s debt problem, rather than getting bogged down in fights over individual cuts.

“The mileposts ahead for Congress are all fiscal debates, and that’s going to help Republicans,” said GOP strategist Kevin Madden, a consultant to 2012 hopeful Mitt Romney. “Debates about spending cuts and the debt limit help us reinforce the reform brand.”

Jamal Simmons, a top Democratic strategist, said it’s no longer credible for his party to argue against spending cuts, but added: “The conversation became about a number – whether to cut $33 billion or $40 billion. Democrats need to get the conversation back to what to cut, and how to preserve priorities. … Republicans made a big mistake with the Planned Parenthood/abortion fight, because it got the conversation back onto values. Once the discussion began to move away from numbers, you could feel the ground beneath the GOP erode.”

Simmons said Obama now should “give another back-to-business speech after this fight, and get people to re-focus on his priorities” from the State of the Union address – education, environment, innovation and infrastructure.

The question that will determine how long this moment lasts for the GOP seems simple: will they overreach? The public clearly wants smaller government but clearly wants it done in a restrained and cooperative way. Some Democrats, for instance, are eager to take on Ryan’s proposal for restructuring (read: cutting) Medicare.

“If you overreach too far, you can get a backlash,” Thune cautioned. “We have to sound reasonable. But the reason the president moved so far is that he has recognized that the government has gotten much, much larger, and that most independents in the country are very uncomfortable with that.”

The tea party is restless: Will they feel compelled not to surrender next time - in the debt limit fight - because some will on this one?

Karl Rove said he worries about criticism that this weekend’s deal was inadequate. Some conservatives may say, “We’re talking about cutting billions, and we need to be cutting trillions.”

“We will create opportunities to cut trillions,” Rove said. “But you need to start with the smaller steps available now. I talked to a couple of members of the tea party faction in the House, and they went out of their way to say that Boehner has done a really good job of keeping us informed, he’s doing the best he can, and we’ve told him we were with him.”

Gingrich also said that Boehner’s calm demeanor fits the moment, noting that the House Republican message has “been on jobs and spending for about a year and a half now.”

“Democrats try to pull them off on Defense of Marriage [Act], or they try to pull them off on immigration,” Gingrich said. “Boehner just ignores them: ‘Our future is bound up in Paul Ryan and the budget, the size of government, getting the economy growing again.’ … They have been very methodical about: Where are the jobs? And let’s cut spending.”

The broader political concern for Republicans is this: Can they prevent Obama from claiming credit for the new frugal spirit? Obama wants to, and has more tools than his adversaries.

Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and 2012 presidential candidate, said by phone from San Jose, Calif., that fiscal arguments have given the party a broader appeal as more people “became aware and educated that it’s not just a matter of political rhetoric – it’s a matter of sixth-grade math.”

“We are in for a sustained period of structural reform,” Pawlenty said. “The country is prepared for the change. The public deserves the truth. They can handle the truth. … Given how deep the hole is, I’m not worried about overreach. I think we should try to be as bold and courageous as the American people will tolerate, and we need to lead them there.”