Tea party making its voice heard at RNC

Tea party making its voice heard at RNC By: Robin Bravender August 2, 2012 09:15 PM EDT

Don’t expect any fireworks from the tea party at the Republican National Convention. The 2012 gathering of party faithful in Tampa marks the first GOP convention since the tea party barrelled onto the scene in 2009. But instead of scheming to take the convention by storm — by rallying members to stage raucous protests or waging a political battle that could hurt presumptive nominee Mitt Romney — national tea party groups are using the convention to cement their ties with the Grand Old Party. Their goal: Push the tea party agenda, but don’t rock the boat enough to damage Republicans’ shot at taking the White House. (Also on POLITICO: Full RNC coverage) Some activists are planning to host low-key events and lobby to shape the Republican platform, but that’s about it. And other tea-party-aligned groups are planning to sit out the event entirely. The lack of outside activity from the tea party in Tampa underscores the fact that activists feel more at home in the Republican ranks and think they’ve got a better shot at pushing the GOP from inside the room. After all, the movement already helped swing the House to the Republicans in the 2010 midterms and has proved to be a major force in GOP primary races down-ticket. It’s also a sign the movement is coming to terms with Romney and prioritizes booting President Barack Obama over causing an ideological uproar. That’s despite a long campaign that had some tea party advocates supporting Romney alternatives like Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. Ned Ryun, CEO of American Majority Action, said there’s an understanding among tea party activists that it’s time to rally around Romney. “Primaries are where you have your disagreements, and you have your serious disagreements then,” he said. “But then when it comes for the general, OK, we may not be crazy about the guy at the top of the ticket, but we realize that he’s far better than the other option, so let’s do what we can.” AMA is planning to send two representatives to the convention for meetings. “It’s the place to be if you want to meet with donors, if you want to meet with other people,” Ryun said. But the group isn’t planning any events. The Club for Growth is staying home. “We don’t plan on having a presence there,” Barney Keller, a spokesman for the group, wrote in an email. Other national groups aligned with the movement are taking a relatively low-key approach to the convention. FreedomWorks has launched a website that urges members to vote on which policy issues they’d like the GOP to incorporate into its platform for 2012. The group is also planning to lobby members of the platform committee to urge them to adopt some of its ideas, said Brendan Steinhauser, federal and state campaigns director at FreedomWorks. The group is also getting guidance from Jim Bopp, vice chairman of the Republican National Committee and an influential conservative attorney, who sits on the committee that will draft the 2012 party platform. Bopp said he’s expecting tea party groups to work the system at the convention, focusing on getting their ideas into the platform. “If that is the way they approach it … they will be much more effective because they have people that are willing to work with them,” he said. “And then they consider them to be part of the conservative movement, just like the RNC is part of the conservative movement.” Conservative leaders say to expect much less dissent from the right than what John McCain faced at the 2008 convention. Some conservatives were irked by McCain’s positions on campaign finance reform, climate legislation and spending — which they saw as too far to the left. That led to efforts in 2008 to lobby McCain on those issues and to push the party’s platform to the right. But Bopp says that’s no longer an issue. “I think Romney is a mainstream conservative; I don’t think McCain was,” said Bopp, who has served on three platform committees prior to this year. “I don’t know of any issues like that with Romney.” The tea-party-aligned conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which is funded in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, is also planning to stage some “activist-oriented events” at both the Republican and Democratic conventions, said AFP President Tim Phillips. But he said his group isn’t planning any protests, and he doesn’t see the convention as a defining moment for the tea party. “It’s not like 1968, when the Democrats were in Chicago and it was a veritable war zone, or ’76, or ’80 when the [Ronald] Reagan forces finally took over the party. Those were defining years, but those were 30, 40 years ago,” he said. Phillips added that the tea party “has already made its stamp on, frankly, both parties, so it doesn’t need a convention to put its stamp on anything.” That’s demonstrated, he added, by the number of tea party members who will be serving as delegates to the convention in Tampa. “They’re not on the outside beating the door to get in. They’re in,” he said. Even the libertarian Rep. Ron Paul appears to have toned down his tactics since 2008, when he staged his own alternative convention in defiance of the national party. This year, the Texas Republican is planning a pre-convention rally with supporters in Tampa, an event that was OK’d by the RNC. For now, tea party activists are focusing on boosting their favored candidates in Senate and House races. But while tea party leaders say they aren’t planning to cause an uproar in Tampa, they insist they aren’t giving up their quest to push Romney to the right. “In many ways, it’s kind of a blessing in disguise that Romney won the nomination, simply because we know exactly who he is and what to expect,” said Ryun of American Majority Action. “There’s always going to have to be constant pressure from the right to push him right because, again, his instincts are not naturally conservative, and the same can be said for those surrounding him.”

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