Eight of the 11 Georgia Republicans who serve in Congress committed heresy this month in the eyes of conservative groups, voting for a bipartisan budget deal. Wednesday night, five semi-outraged Georgians showed up in this south Georgia city to denounce their apostasy and strategize on how to bring them back into line.
Those numbers — both the unprecedented mass defection and the muted backlash — reveal just how much has changed in the wake of the GOP’s abortive effort to defund Obamacare, a confrontation that shut down much of the federal government. Whether that change amounts to a lasting power shift in favor of the party’s more traditional, pro-business wing, at the expense of tea party groups, is an open question.
Wednesday night’s town hall meeting in Statesboro was organized by Americans for Prosperity, one of the groups that spent big money attacking the federal health care law in the run-up to the Oct. 1 shutdown. In attendance were two college students, a nurse and two high-school students she brought to observe politics in action.
Organizer Joel Aaron Foster blamed the paltry turnout on the location (the district of Democrat John Barrow) and the timing (during the holiday season and after the House vote on the budget). He said similar meetings in Tifton, Augusta and Warner Robbins had attracted as many as 60.
But, for the first time, Georgia’s Republicans in Congress apparently judged that the consequences of siding with AFP and its allies would outweigh the consequences of siding against them.
“These outside groups that were promoting the shutdown now have folks in the House and Senate saying: ‘Guys, no, we went down that road and it didn’t work,’” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss. “We got our hat handed to us, and the conversation is just much different now.”
Chambliss has announced his retirement, so he’s largely immune to pressure. But he wasn’t alone in suggesting that even many GOP voters have become disenchanted with the scorched-earth tactics advocated by those who helped force the shutdown.
Rep. Doug Collins, a Gainesville Republican, has racked up one of the most conservative voting records in Congress in his freshman year. Still, he voted for the compromise budget framework negotiated by Rep Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
It is projected to increase spending by $63 billion over two years in exchange for $85 billion of deficit reduction over 10 years. It will also restore defense funding that was slashed under the automatic, across-the-board cuts known as “sequestration,” cuts that distressed many non-tea party Republicans.
Collins, who held a conference call with activists in his district the morning after the vote, acknowledges that he has encountered “healthy skepticism” about it from some north Georgia constituents. But he’s unapologetic.
“I think it was positive step forward,” Collins said. “For me, frankly, it would have been an easy vote just to vote no and say, ‘Find something else.’ But I wasn’t elected to do easy. I was elected to do right.”
Even Rep. Tom Graves, a Ranger Republican who rallied conservatives to the “defund Obamacare” movement ahead of the shutdown, backed the deal. Just before the vote, he called Joe McCutchen, of Ellijay, a conservative activist and the chairman of Graves’ first campaign for Congress in 2010.
“I was shocked,” McCutchen said.
Graves explained his vote in a written statement, saying it’s better to target fraud and government pensions for cuts than to stick with sequestration, which brought a loss of defense jobs.
Notably, the three Georgia Republicans who voted against the budget deal are running for Chambliss’ Senate seat; in the GOP primary, they cannot afford to cede any ground on the right.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, dramatically signalled the GOP’s pique with outside forces 10 days ago, publicly excoriating groups such as Americans for Prosperity, Heritage Action for America, the Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks. The speaker accused them of just trying to raise money by attacking his members, saying “they have lost all credibility.”
The base took notice.
“I’m not sure this specific bill is a slap at the tea party,” said Steve Ramey, of Founding Fathers Tea Party Patriots in Gwinnett County. “The words of Boehner and others certainly are a slap.”
Despite outcry from tea party groups, conservative lobbyists and talk radio hosts against the budget compromise, its success never appeared in serious doubt. Even so, Ryan, the conservative star and former vice presidential nominee, met with many reluctant conservatives to assuage their doubts.
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Coweta County Republican, went from denigrating the agreement one day to embracing it the next, after Ryan’s persuasion.
Collins, too, said Ryan’s name made a difference. “It definitely always helps to have someone of Paul’s stature who has fought the good fight, has fought for conservative values,” he said.
As soon as the House bill passed, Chambliss got a call from his close friend Boehner asking for support. Ryan called not long after.
The deal was sealed, Chambliss said, when he heard from the Pentagon’s No. 2 official, Christine Fox, and the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, urging support for the bill to give their departments added “flexibility” and head off fresh budget cuts scheduled for early next year.
Isakson and Chambliss also won an assurance from Murray on the Senate floor that she would quickly draft a change to the deal once it becomes law to exempt disabled veterans from the pension cuts.
Defense spending, long championed by traditional Republicans, has long been a flash point between them and tea party groups. Where old-school Republicans see national defense as a pre-eminent role of government, tea partiers are likelier to see the defense budget as a playground for greedy corporate interests.
In the wake of the budget deal, which passed the Democrat-controlled Senate Thursday, conservative groups vowed to carry their cause forward into 2014 and beyond.
“We didn’t lose the war,” said Foster of Americans for Prosperity. “The (budget) battle was a setback. But people are paying attention.”
Americans for Prosperity has 2.3 million activists nationally, up from 1.7 million about 18 months ago, he said. Georgia alone has 55,000.
But he couldn’t hide the fact that none of those bodies were in the 90 empty chairs in the cavernous hall in Statesboro. Foster didn’t bother to stand on the stage. His voice reverberated in the largely vacant space. Only a few of the overhead lights had to be turned on. Twice during his talk the lights turned off because they didn’t track any motion in the place.
Ramey said the response has been muted because normal folks are busy and distracted by the holidays.
“That’s one of the reasons they (Congressional leaders) did it at this time,” he said.
Privately, other Georgia tea party leaders said the budget vote simply lacked the visceral punch of the Obamacare fight. It’s simply too abstract and arcane to inflame the average voter, they said — meaning it’s not the sort of issue around which the tea party would mount a primary challenge against a conservative incumbent.
McCutchen, too, stopped short of repudiating his onetime hero, Graves, over Wednesday’s vote, sounding more wistful than aggrieved.
“I’m disappointed, and it’s made me cautious,” McCutchen said. “And I love Tom. I’m not personally against him. But I can’t go around now saying he’s a super taxpayer champion.”
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