Time to oust GOP's Boehner and Cantor? Full tea party not yet on board. (video)
The tea party movement is not on the same page – at least at the moment – over whether two top Republicans, House Speaker John Boehner and majority leader Eric Cantor, should be targeted in the 2012 elections for not pushing harder for federal budget cuts.
One group, Tea Party Nation, has called for the defeat of the top House Republicans in the next election. “There are currently some very specific plans by some very serious people to make sure that both Boehner and Cantor not only have primary opposition in the next election, but to also make certain they lose their next primary,” Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips wrote Monday on the group’s website, as reported by Bloomberg News.
On the other hand, Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer, speaking at a Monitor-sponsored breakfast for reporters on Tuesday, said her group has "not gotten there yet," though it is "paying attention to what is going on."
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“There are many different groups in this movement and not any group speaks for the entire movement. Judson has made that very vocal opinion and some people support that. Others do not. We have not gotten there yet," she said. "At this point, we are only looking at Senate right now – at potential candidates for the Senate and our Senate targets.”
Ms. Kremer’s views are significant given the active role her group played in 2010 legislative races and the expectation that it will attempt to do the same in 2012. She did seem inclined to cut GOP lawmakers some slack on the budget-cutting front, saying, "Anybody that thinks these guys are going to come to Washington and completely turn things around within a three-month period, that is unrealistic. We didn’t get here in three months, we are not going to change it in three months.”
Tea Party Express has so far singled out four senators – two Democrats and two Republicans – for defeat.
“Those people are Sen. Olympia Snow from Maine, Sen. Dick Lugar from Indiana, Sen. Debbie Stabenow from Michigan, and Sen. Ben Nelson from Nebraska,” Kremer said.
