Colorado’s two Republican congressmen, Mike Coffman (CO6) and Doug Lamborn (CO5), joined Michele Bachmann‘s House Tea Party Caucus. In the year of the anti-incumbant tea party, Joining Bachmann’s caucus is one way for GOP lawmakers to demonstrate their right-wing anti-Washington bona fides. It’s also a way to alienate mainstream GOP voters, enrage any non-right wing members of their districts and tick off tea party true believers, who mostly see Bachmann’s caucus as a political move that will end up corralling the movement and forcing it back into the narrow tube that is our two party political system, which tea partiers rallied against in forming as a no longer acceptable alternative.
The Democratic National Committee is having a field day with the move.
Representative Doug Lamborn (CO-5) recently followed the lead of extreme right-winger Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and joined the newly formed Congressional “Tea Party Caucus.” Lamborn has aligned himself with Tea Party Republicans who have advocated extreme policies that would take our country backward like abolishing the Department of Education, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency and repealing consumer protections in health insurance reform and Wall Street reform to name a few. It’s clear that instead of standing up for their constituents in Washington, Lamborn has decided to use his power in Washington to advance an extreme agenda…
DNC Regional Press Secretary, Ricardo A. Ramírez:
“Lamborn’s constituents deserve to know – why does he stand with the Tea Party’s agenda to repeal the Affordable Care Act, privatize Social Security, end Medicare as it presently exists, extend Bush tax breaks for the wealthy and big oil and implement policies to take us back to the same failed economic ideas of George Bush and Dick Cheney that caused the crisis, created record deficits and led to the loss of 8 million jobs? Does Lamborn really want to end Medicare as it presently exists? Protect reckless companies like BP? Or repeal unprecedented consumer protections that ensure that individuals can’t be kicked off their health insurance when they get sick?
“Voters in the 5th District sent Lamborn to Washington to represent their district – not to fight for an extreme agenda that will benefit a few of the privileged at the expense of hard-working, middle class Americans.”
House Republican leadership was reportedly anxious about the tea party caucus but, as FrumForum reports, three of the seven-person Republican House Leadership joined the caucus: Conference Chair Mike Pence, NRCC Chair Pete Sessions and Conference Secretary John Carter.
Frum also reports that members of the caucus, like Lamborn, unsurprisingly come from districts with few Democratic voters. Lamborn’s district is based around Christian conservative and military stronghold Colorado Springs.
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