It’s The Tea Party Insurgents vs The GOP Establishment

Mitt Romney, welcome to John Boehner’s world.

From the WSJ:

Both men—one the presidential candidate just stung in South Carolina, the other the speaker of the House—are fairly conventional leaders attempting to ride herd on a restless Republican Party that seems more interested in insurgent leaders. Let’s just say they are having limited success.

That’s the real lesson of South Carolina’s Saturday primary, where Newt Gingrich, the Che Guevara of the right, always interested in leading a rebellion, smashed Mr. Romney, the Harvard M.B.A. interested in carefully calibrated, data-driven change. The South Carolina story—and the story going forward from here—isn’t so much Newt vs. Mitt as it is the insurgents vs. the establishment.

In fact, that has been the story of the Republican Party since the tea-party uprising began in 2009. The drama now will play out anew in the remaining Republican primary calendar.

The tea-party movement sprang up spontaneously among Americans angry at deficits, debts and joblessness, but it took root within a Republican Party whose members were angry at the party’s failures in the latest presidential election year and skeptical of those in the lead. Whether the Republican Party co-opted the tea-party movement or the movement co-opted the Republican Party is a question that can be debated endlessly, but the fact is that Republicans and tea partiers hitched up for the 2010 elections.

The tea-party movement sprang up spontaneously among Americans angry at deficits, debts and joblessness, but it took root within a Republican Party whose members were angry at the party’s failures in the latest presidential election year and skeptical of those in the lead. Whether the Republican Party co-opted the tea-party movement or the movement co-opted the Republican Party is a question that can be debated endlessly, but the fact is that Republicans and tea partiers hitched up for the 2010 elections.

The tea-party movement brought a shot of populist anger and energy to the party and led to a takeover of the House and the ascension of Mr. Boehner to speaker. The down-ballet was also very significant. There were over 700 down ballot defeats.

What Mr. Boehner has discovered, however, is that the House Republican freshmen who rode in on the tea-party wave aren’t much interested in taking orders from party leaders, including him. Particularly on negotiating a deficit deal with the Obama White House and extending a payroll-tax cut, they have, in fact, defied the speaker. Many House freshmen believe they represent a party that is, down among the ranks, angry and uninterested in what Washington considers reasonable compromise, and they act accordingly.

Most likely, the pivot point came in the first South Carolina debate, sponsored by TheWall Street Journal and Fox News, when Mr. Gingrich angrily confronted questioner Juan Williams on a question about poverty and race and declared, “I’m going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job.” The audience cheered, and many party regulars seemed to have found the angry messenger to match their mood.

Is Newt just a vessel for this anger, or is it real, and will it last???