Tea Party Groups Suffer Another Huge Defeat -- Are They Toast?
Time to throw them over a balcony.
The strong bipartisan House vote on Wednesday for the farm bill was the third major defeat for conservative lobbying groups since the government shutdown, a sign that they're losing their stranglehold on the House Republican majority.
The trio of defeats: The October bill to re-open the shuttered government and avert a catastrophic debt default (with no strings attached), the December budget agreement to raise spending and mitigate automatic sequester cuts and now the farm bill to renew agriculture subsidies and food stamps.
Tea party groups such as the Club For Growth and Heritage Action fought these initiatives every step of the way and threatened to use their scorecards to downgrade lawmakers who voted for them. In October, they lost the battle when Speaker John Boehner put a clean bill on the floor to fund the government and avert default (although most Republicans voted against it). But the budget and farm bill agreements each passed with the support of 70 percent of House Republicans, a more troubling sign for the tea party groups.
Time to throw them over a balcony.