Samuel P. Jacobs Reuters Republican US Representative Michael Grimm's office was filled with conservative Tea Party activists one day last month and they weren't happy. Why, they asked, hadn't the first-term lawmaker done more to slash US government spending? Why, months earlier, had Grimm broken ranks with the Tea Party by voting — with another 173 of the House's 242 Republicans — to raise the US debt limit? Grimm, 42, said he did not want to raise the debt limit beyond $15 trillion but that it was either that or shut down the government. “When you are in the middle of a war, how do you close the government and not pay your soldiers?” the former Marine and FBI agent said. “How do you not send seniors Social Security checks? “I'm frustrated, too,” Grimm recalled telling the activists. The scene in Grimm's office was a vivid display of the pressure facing many of the 87 House Republican freshmen — most backed by the Tea Party — as they seek re-election nearly two years after they swept into Washington and helped change the national debate on government spending. In the Nov. 6 elections, Democrats are targeting Grimm and more than two dozen other Republican freshmen by casting them as the compromise-resistant sources of division and dysfunction for an unpopular Congress. But as the recent episode in Grimm's office showed, some of the most intense pressure facing Republican freshmen is coming not from Democrats but from the Tea Party activists who helped send them to Washington in the first place. If 2010 was the year the Tea Party emerged as a political force in Washington, 2012 will be the year that determines whether the movement can live with itself on Capitol Hill. The activists complain that Republicans have not been tough enough in resisting increased government spending and that they have become part of the Washington bureaucratic culture that the Tea Party despises. Several House freshmen — including Ann Marie Buerkle of New York, Allen West of Florida, Robert Dold, Bobby Schilling and Joe Walsh of Illinois, Chip Cravaack of Minnesota and Dan Benishek of Michigan — represent districts that are politically divided or leaning only slightly toward the Republican Party. For them, a lack of enthusiasm among Tea Party members who have backed them in the past could lead to defeat in November. Still, the vast majority of Republican freshmen are expected to win re-election — and help their party keep control of the House — largely because they are from conservative districts. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report estimates that about two dozen of the first-term Republicans face competitive races. Grimm, who represents New York City's Staten Island, is a slight favorite to win another term over Democrat Mark Murphy, Cook projects. Even so, Grimm is among several freshmen Republicans who are receiving a lecture from Tea Party activists that goes something like this: Remember why you're in Washington. “We have passionate, knowledgeable and diverse members,” said Frank Santarpia, an organizer of the Staten Island Tea Party, several of whose members met with Grimm in March. “Some of our members love Grimm, others are disappointed with him.” Republican Rep. Steven LaTourette, an 18-year veteran of Congress from Ohio and close friend to House Speaker John Boehner, said he respects the power of the Tea Party movement but that it has made it difficult to accomplish much in the House. However, LaTourette said, many freshman lawmakers have “grown into the job,” and have become more than simply reflections of the Tea Party's no-compromise argument. __
