Mr. Boehner vs. The Tea Party

by Eric Hammer | FTMDaily Contributing Writer

TEL AVIV, Mar 25 – In a move which may portend further upheavals in the 2012 election, the founder of Tea Party Nation, Judson Phillips recently posted a comment on his blog calling for a challenge against Speaker of the House John Boehner over his refusal to implement some $100 billion in cuts to the federal budget. Indeed, Speaker Boehner has been working to form a compromise with the Democratic Party to cut less than the $61 billion that the Tea Party activists currently in congress had demanded several months ago, sooner after the election.

“Charlie Sheen is now making more sense than Boehner” was how Mr. Judson put it on his blog. He and other tea party activists have become a dual edged sword for Mr. Boehner and more mainstream Republicans.

Mr. Boehner is known for having tried to strike a more balanced tone in dealing with a Democratic president and a Democratic controlled senate however Mr. Boehner also cannot afford to dismiss the Tea Party movement since it was their votes that swept the Republicans back into power.

There is also a fear amongst the veteran Republicans of a return of 1994 when the party was blamed for the government shut down that was precipitated by a fight between then president Bill Clinton and then newly elected Speaker of the House Newt Ginrich.

It should be recalled that during that fight the Republicans came out of the budget battle badly bruised while President Clinton was able to rally and gain a second term in office, something virtually all Republicans have expressed a fervent desire to avoid seeing happen with President Obama.

However, the Tea Party movement is far from unified on this issue, with other important figures, notably Mark Meckler, the co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots taking pains to distance himself from Judson’s comments while at the same time expressing his disappointment at the slow pace of adoption of major cuts by Congress.

Yet another figure in the Tea Party movement, Amy Kremer of the Tea Party Express expressed regret at Judson’s comments, noting that the movement had just started to gain respect in Washington and that it would be a shame to lose it so quickly.

The battle has been raging around the budget deficit since the beginning of the fiscal year and Congress currently has a deadline of April 8 to come up with a solution to the impasse before there is a government shutdown throughout the Federal Government.

Mr. Boehner has gone on record before as saying that he wishes to compromise however he is severely hampered by the large and contentious group of Tea Party freshmen who were swept into the House in the last election, largely on promised to make major cuts in the budget and the deficit.

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