Now correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the Tea Party crowd supposed to come to Washington and do away with things like business as usual, excessive and wasteful government spending ad infinitum? I guess if you can grab some loot from those same interest groups that the Tea Party has been railing against from the start, well so much the better. Sounds and seems like business as usual to me. It also smells like more of the same old hypocrisy as well.
 
Lets take a look at one Tea Party politician in her own words, those of Congresswoman Diane Black (R-TN): "I believe the best ideas to solve our nation's problems will come from people like you, not Washington bureaucrats and special interest groups." In the words of one Washington watcher: "...while many say Black and her companions have created a split in the Republican Party, it is not visible among the companies and interest groups that are donating to members of Congress." Thus it should come as no surprise that Ms. Black has accepted $ 418,000.00 from 190 different PACs!
 
In an article titled "15 Tea Party Caucus freshmen rake in $3.5 million in first 9 months in Washington" Aaron Mehta, a staff writer with the Center for Public Integrity and Bob Biersack, senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics detailed the contribution track record of contributions to fifteen of the most prominent Tea Party freshman showing just how much money each has received. "A joint analysis by iWatch News and the Center for Responsive Politics has found that the 15 freshmen members of the Tea Party Caucus have embraced many of the same special interests that have supported Republicans for years. The fifteen combined have received over $3,450,000 during the first three quarters of this year from almost 700 different PACs." Well a tidy $3.4 Million plus dollars sounds like real money to me. And does anyone think that that huge chunk of change comes with no strings attached? Hardly, so lets all just be honest and admit that the Tea Party "patriots" are no less corruptible than anyone else who is in Washington and plenty of them are carrying out business as usual just like the veterans.
 
For some like Congressman Dennis Ross (R-FL) two thirds of the money he raised this year came from PACs. The litany of contributors ranges from major American corporations to the American Bankers Association to, of course, the Koch Brothers. Again, quoting the aforementioned article: "Overall, this group of freshmen representatives has become just as reliant on PAC money as their counterparts who have been in the House longer.  The median Tea Party Caucus freshman brought in roughly 44 percent of their money from PACs, 43 percent from large individual donors, and 4 percent from small donors who gave less than $200 each. Comparatively, the median House Republican got 46 percent from PACs, 45 percent from large individuals and 4 percent from small individual donors." Its important to note that small rank and file individual donors amount for a piddly four percent of the total intake in contributions. I guess when the "people" represent such a small portion of your total cash intake there's no reason to believe that their interests will remain in the forefront for very long.
 
Oh well, so much for the Tea Party movement being a genuine engine of change in Washington. To date the only visible effect of the arrival of the Tea Party on Capitol Hill seems to be a more intense variety of gridlock than had existed before and just a new set of folks who seem amenable to the pay to play politics that they were supposed to change but seems to have changed them instead. All of this kind of reminds me of the Republican "Revolution" that produced the "Contract with America". Remember all of those fresh faced Republicans who came to Washington in the 90s and were only going to stay for one term? Well more than a few became professional politicians as well, some are still in Washington. Oh well the more things change the more they stay the same.
 
SJG
11/22/11
 
 
Source: 15 Tea Party Caucus freshmen rake in $3.5 million in first 9 months in Washington; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-center-for-public-integrity/15-tea-party-caucus-fresh_b_1101194.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=111811&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureTitle&utm_term=Daily%20Brief