Leadership Bid Reflects Growing Tea Party Influence in World's Greatest Deliberative Body

By Michael Johns

The tea party movement began in an unassuming way: A series of March 2009 conference calls of a couple dozen conservative and libertarian activists from across the nation. How far it has come. Yesterday, after taking back the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2010 and growing its rank and file members into the millions in less than three years, the movement made a bold but ultimately unsuccessful bid for a leadership position in the United States Senate.

With tea party support, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) challenged U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) for vice-chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. With all 47 Republican Senators casting votes, Blunt won the vote narrowly, 25 to 22. But the tea party-supported Johnson challenge proves important symbolically as a demonstration that, while tea party-affiliated members of the U.S. House of Representatives have proven hugely influential in guiding the direction of that legislative body, support for the tea party movement and its policy agenda is growing in the U.S. Senate too.

Since the vote was conducted by secret ballot, no official list of how Republican Senators voted is available. But in garnering 22 votes, Johnson proved that the Republican minority of the U.S. Senate is increasingly sympathetic to tea party sentiments. Even in his home state of Missouri, Blunt failed to garner the support of the three Republican candidates now vying to face Democrat U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill in this November's general election, a sign that Republican candidates fear alienating the increasingly powerful tea party movement, whose support is deemed critical in national, state and municipal primaries across the nation.

Following his electoral victory, Blunt suggested that he hopes to be responsive to the tea party movement's policy agenda. "I hope that six months from now they're not disappointed," he said.

Several national tea party organizations and leaders had been vocal in support of Johnson's bid for the leadership position.

In Staten Island, the Promise of Newt Gingrich's Tea Party Support

By Michael Johns

No Republican Presidential candidate has yet solidified the support of the nation's tea party movement. But Newt Gingrich's hugely positive reception this past weekend at a Staten Island Tea Party event certainly suggests that the politically burgeoning Gingrich has good reason for optimism. Reception to his remarks this past Friday was perhaps best captured in a New York Post headline: "Staten Island Tea Partiers: Newt's a beaut."

In his remarks to the Staten Island Tea Party, Gingrich challenged President Barack Obama to seven three-hour debates should Gingrich become the Republican nominee. "Let's be fair. I'll allow him to use a teleprompter," Gingrich joked to the 700 attendees.

Gingrich also addressed head on the several Republican Congressional opponents who have announced opposition to his candidacy. "I am a very aggressive reformer," Gingrich said. "I have stepped on a lot of toes. It means some congressmen who have petty interests find themselves unhappy," he said.

Gingrich openly mocked Obama's indecisiveness on a proposed Canada-to-Texas petroleum pipeline. "It's one thing to say somebody can't play chess. It's a second thing to say somebody can't play checkers. But you can't play tick-tack-toe, too?" he said. He called Obama "delusional" for labeling himself a "friend of Israel" during a recent New York City fundraising visit.

Gingrich's successful Staten Island Tea Party appearance was accompanied by news that former Staten Island Congressman Vito Fossella has endorsed his candidacy.

In polling, Gingrich has seen a substantial increase in his national support since Herman Cain's announcement this past weekend that he was suspending his campaign. In an average of recent national polls conducted Monday by the political website Real Clear Politics, Gingrich has now surpassed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as the leader among all Republican Presidential candidates. Romney, the Real Clear Politics poll summary showed, has fallen to third, behind Gingrich and Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX).