How tea party activists react to a compromise may help determine the fate of the movement. Tea party ready for letdown, payback

Tea party activists braced for disappointment as negotiations on the debt ceiling finally resulted in a deal Sunday, but sent a clear signal to congressional Republicans that they are in no mood to tolerate compromise and will seek retribution against anyone who has not fully supported their agenda.

They are focused in particular on the fate of the concession they extracted from House Speaker John Boehner in order to get his debt ceiling bill through the House last week - a provision making a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution a prerequisite for raising the debt ceiling again that they regarded as a huge victory.


“If the final bill is passed by establishment Republicans and House Democrats and does not include a balanced budget amendment as a requirement, it will be completely unacceptable and will be seen as a violation of the mandate that the tea party and likeminded people gave Republicans in 2010,” said Ryan Hecker, the leader of a crowd-sourced tea party effort called the Contract from America.

“The tea party didn’t help elect Republicans because they liked Republicans. They elected Republicans to give them a second chance. And if they go moderate on this, then they have ruined their second chance, and there will be a real effort to replace them with those who will stand up for economic conservative values,” said Hecker, who helped conservative House Republicans rally support for the amendment.

How tea party activists and organizers react to a compromise not to their liking could go a long way towards determining the fate of the small-government movement that exploded onto the scene in 2009 in opposition to what activists saw as unchecked spending by President Barack Obama and the Democratic congress.

“People are definitely frustrated by the process, but we’ve got to regroup and figure out what our next move is,” said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, a leading tea party organizing group. “The test of the tea party movement will be whether or not we stay engaged – whether or not we’re capable of seeing this process through.”

Kibbe’s group urged its members to lobby self-avowed tea party Republicans in the House to oppose the plan passed Friday as insufficiently adherent to tea party principles.

But other tea party activists and organizers embraced it – and the fact that the debate gripping Washington is based on the tea party’s paramount goal of reducing the size of the government – as evidence of their movement’s impact, regardless of the likelihood the balanced budget amendment will not be included in the final deal.

“We’ve had tremendous success by changing the conversation, so in that way we’re winning, but issue by issue, vote by vote, there are going to be disappointments along the way,” said Jason Hoyt, the founder of the Central Florida Tea Party Council.

Hoyt and other tea party activists interviewed for this story rejected allegations by Democratic members of Congress – and even some moderate conservatives– that obstinacy by tea party activists, organizations and members of Congress will be to blame if a failure to raise the debt ceiling plunges the nation into financial meltdown.

Nonetheless, some tea party activists and groups, such as the Tea Party Patriots, continue to oppose increasing the debt ceiling under any circumstances, while others support increasing it only if the move is accompanied by a balanced budget amendment.

That’s why many tea partiers considered it a high point in their movement’s short history when Boehner, in an effort to win conservative support for his plan to raise the debt ceiling, included a balanced budget provision after failing to muster support Thursday for a debt ceiling increase sans amendment.

It made the second stage of a two-part debt ceiling increase contingent upon both chambers of Congress passing a balanced budget amendment to send to the states – a move that flipped many of the last hold-out members from ‘no’ to ‘yes.’

The provision was generally thought to ensure that the bill, already opposed by Democrats even before the amendment was added, would not pass the Democrat-controlled Senate, and, in fact, it almost immediately voted to table the bill.

Nonetheless, its House passage was seen by tea partiers as validation of the idea that their movement, which helped elect 87 Republican House freshmen in 2010 and propel the GOP into the majority, would not be co-opted by the Republican establishment.

But the willingness of many of those same tea party Republicans to vote ‘yes’ Friday on a bill that tea party activists contend lacked provisions from the so-called “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan they favored also showed the movement’s limits in Washington.

Displeasure over the perception that Boehner’s bill gave short shrift to the cut, cap and balance plan – which 115 House members had pledged to uphold – “drains some energy out” of the movement, conceded Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a conservative member who is steeped in the tea party and who voted “no” on Boehner’s bill.

But FreedomWorks president Kibbe said “Most tea partiers I talk to understand that you can’t fix these really big problems that our country faces with one election. It’s unreasonable to expect, as a movement with a small foothold in Washington, D.C., that we’re going to win every legislative fight with just a small fraction of the legislature that claims to be with us.”

Chris Littleton, an organizer with the Cincinnati Tea Party, said many tea party activists did have “unrealistically high expectations about what was going to happen after the 2010 elections and I think a lot of people are coming to understand that you can’t accomplish everything at once.”

Kibbe, Littleton and other activists said the debt limit vote – depending on the specifics of the final deal – would be among a number of factors tea partiers would consider when deciding whether to mount primary challenges to incumbent Republicans in 2012.

But other organizers said it could be a driving force in a rebellion against the GOP establishment that echoed 2010, when tea party challengers defeated Republican incumbents and GOP establishment-favored candidates in primaries across the country.

“If Republicans totally capitulate on this, it could become a TARP-like liability next year and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a little bit of a bloodletting in primaries – and that might not be a bad thing,” said Ned Ryun, president of the tea party activist training group American Majority, the political arm of which was among the first groups to oppose a compromise deal proposed by GOP Senate leaders.

“We just can’t have such a bloodletting that Republicans lose the House majority and Obama wins reelection.”

In fact, there have already been discussions publicly and on tea party listservs about mounting primary challenges against everyone from Boehner to the House freshmen who courted tea party support in 2010, but who cast ‘yes’ votes Friday – a group that notably includes movement poster-child Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.).

West was an early and enthusiastic convert to the Boehner bill that passed Friday, arguing that while it wasn’t perfect, it made significant cuts and caps to discretionary spending and gave Republicans a real shot at passing the balanced budget amendment.

Hoyt, the Florida tea party organizer, said he was “shocked and disappointed” by West’s vote.

“I liked the guy up until this,” he said, predicting tea party enthusiasm for West in Florida would wane, and could potentially result in a primary challenge. “Maybe in candidate criteria and candidate forums, we need to look more at whether they will fold under pressure,” Hoyt said.

On Friday morning, West sounded wounded by the criticism, hinting the distaste some tea partiers expressed towards him might be mutual.

“If the folks who one minute they’re saying that I’m their ‘tea party hero’ and what, three or four days later I’m a ‘tea party defector’ — that kind of schizophrenia I’m not going to get involved in it,” West told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham.

But, just before Friday’s vote, West predicted in an interview with POLITICO that tea partiers will “come around and understand” his stance “as long as I continue to explain myself objectively and with right type of assessment and frame things within the principles they stand for.”

Still, West, an Army combat veteran, added “I’ve taken shots from people who are really taking shots at you, so this isn’t a big deal.”

Intimidation is unlikely to sway many tea party freshmen, suggested Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.), who courted tea party support in winning his seat last year. The freshmen class is comprised of “a lot of independent minds,” he said, asserting “We’re not going to be pushed around a lot by groups on either side.”

The inclination to oust lawmakers who voted ‘yes’ Friday night “highlights a lot of naiveté in how the process works both electorally and legislatively” within tea party circles, said Erick Erickson, editor of the blog Red State, which is influential in the movement.

It shows a lack of “understanding of the pressure that can be brought to bear on a member,” said Erickson, who had been active in a tea party-tinged listserv of conservative congressional staffers and activists who had worked to stymie an earlier Boehner proposal to raise the debt ceiling that was widely opposed by tea party activists.

When it was discovered Wednesday that the staffers were using the list to generate activist calls urging tea party members to kill the Boehner deal, it prompted something of a revolt within the House Republican caucus, where members chanted “Fire him! Fire him!” at the most senior congressional staffer involved.

Some groups represented on the listserv – including Hecker’s outfit, Contract from America, and the Club for Growth – either supported Boehner’s bill or withdrew their opposition when he announced the inclusion of the balanced budget amendment in his bill.

But other groups – including FreedomWorks, Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Express maintained their opposition to the Boehner bill – and most tea party outfits seem likely to oppose any deal hammered out by the White House and congressional leaders.

Tea party lawmakers, meanwhile, are hoping that activists and their groups appreciate the difficult spot they’re in.

“Some of them are disappointed and some have said they know this is a tough position to be in and they won’t hold it against people,” said King.

Jonathan Allen contributed to this report