Are You Angry With New GOP Congress Already? Tea Party Is

The 112th Congress hasn’t even gotten to work yet and there’s already tension brewing between the upstarts in the Tea Party and their big brothers and sisters in the GOP. Like teenagers who insist on wearing their ripped jeans to dinner with grammy and gramps, some members of the Tea Party have started straining at the leash.

Their biggest gripe, according to The New York Times, is anger over what they see as a failure by sitting party members to stem the tide of major legislation passed by the Obama administration in the waning days of the 111th. They’re also a bit pissed that more of them haven’t gotten powerful leadership positions on Congressional committees.

That sound you’re going to start hearing is members of the Tea Party shouting: “Hey! America said they were sick of the same old crap with their votes in November! And this is how you react! Have you not been paying attention at all?”

Tea Partiers are mad that Democrats were able to push through a raft of legislation that they opposed during the lame-duck session, including a bill to cover medical care for 9/11 first responders, a repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the ratification of the New Start arms control treaty with Russia and a landmark food safety bill.

“Do I think that they’ve recognized what happened on Election Day? I would say decisively no,” said Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler of the Dems. The Patriots sent out an alert to their members last month urging their representatives to “stop now and go home!!”

“We sent them a message that we expect them to go home and come back newly constituted and do something different,” Meckler said. “For them to legislate when they’ve collectively lost their mandate just shows the arrogance of the ruling elite. I can’t imagine being repudiated in the way they were and then coming back and saying ‘Now that we’ve been repudiated, let’s go pass some legislation.’ I’m surprised by how blatant it was."

Meckler was just as mad, if not more so, with Republicans, who he dubbed a “disaster,” claiming that the only reason they stood up to Democrats at all was because “we stood behind them with a big stick.” And even though they applauded the extension of the Bush tax cuts for everyone, including millionaires and billionaires, they were pissed that the GOP bailed on the push to fully repeal the estate tax.

More than 40 Tea Party candidates were elected to the House and Senate in November, but they missed out on key leadership positions. However, they can claim one (albeit small) victory, as new House Leader John Boehner of Ohio has agreed to bar any new legislation from being introduced without posting it online for three days before any vote. Incoming Tea Party House members also managed to lodge a first with a rule that calls for the Constitution to be read aloud on the House floor when the session opens on Wednesday.

Do you think the GOP and Tea Party can get along?