Posted on 11/03/2010 8:06:37 PM PDT by Hotlanta Mike
Political Insider Congratulations, GOP class of 2010. Meet the Georgia woman who’ll keep you in line 11:39 pm November 2, 2010, by Jim Galloway
Congratulations, Republican members of the Class of 2010. Welcome to Congress.
Allow me to introduce your orientation leader, a woman who could determine whether your next two years are merely tough, or a brick wall — a woman who may figure deeply when it comes to renewal of your rookie contracts in 2012.
Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin takes part in an Election Day demonstration on the lawn of the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday. AP/Cliff Owen
She is 40-year-old Jenny Beth Martin. Less than two years ago she was cleaning houses in Cherokee County to make ends meet. On Tuesday night, this co-founder of Tea Party Patriots was in the ballroom of a New Jersey Avenue hotel in Washington, D.C., celebrating her large part in the historic overthrow of the lower half of Congress.
“We’re asking people to really enjoy tonight,” she said by phone, before the party began. “Tomorrow, our real work begins.”
Martin, the mother of 7-year-old twins, is Sarah Palin without the flash, the quips, the winks or the designer glasses. She’s become the face and voice of the best-funded and most organized – admittedly a relative term – tea party group in the country.
Before Tuesday, Martin had spent the last 12 days in a private jet, touching down in 20 states for rallies. The high-end transportation was donated by the founder of a semiconductor firm. Last month, an anonymous donor gave the tea party group $1 million – on the condition that all of it be spent by Tuesday.
National exit polling showed that four of 10 voters on Tuesday expressed support for the tea party’s brand of constitutional fundamentalism. But jetting around the country, setting the grassroots afire, was the easy part.
Martin and her fellow tea partyists now must persuade the GOP that it would be wise not to squander the chance they’ve been given.
“If they don’t vote the way we expect them to vote, then we’re going to do to them the same thing we’ve done to many Democrats and a handful of Republicans. We’ll melt their phone lines,” Martin said.
First on the Tea Party Patriots’ post-election agenda: An orientation for freshmen members of Congress on Nov. 14 and 15, where they will be informed of tea party expectations. Martin and her group will do more than threaten brimstone and melted phone lines. They intend to offer cover.
“If they’re getting pressured from the House leadership or lobbyists, they can let us know and we’ll give them the political support they need,” Martin said.
Martin doesn’t expect an immediate repeal of health care reform – but she does expect to see it quickly defunded. “Given the current administration, an immediate repeal isn’t going to happen,” she said.
Spending on all fronts will be an immediate target, and this is where things could get sticky. One small example: Over the weekend, U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican from Coweta County certain to gain influence in the next Congress, made an open suggestion to President Barack Obama.
Westmoreland said Obama should send hundreds of millions of dollars to Georgia for the dredging of the Port of Savannah – an act that he said would create 10,000 or so new jobs.
The former Home Depot computer programmer said Westmoreland’s proposal was news to her, and declined comment on it.
Martin is emblematic of this election year in more ways than her tea party affiliation. Perhaps not since the Great Depression has economic stress become such an intimate part of the political scene.
Despite his victory Tuesday, Republican nominee for governor Nathan Deal was forced to battle questions of his fiscal solvency over the last three months of his campaign. State Rep. Jill Chambers, an Atlanta Republican and chairman of the legislative committee that oversees MARTA, filed for Chapter 7 relief last month.
Her campaign funds were frozen. On Tuesday night, Chambers was losing a battle with Democrat Elena Parent.
Martin, a native of Rome, married her husband Lee in 1992. She became the stay-at-home mom, managing a large upscale house in Woodstock on the income generated by Lee Martin’s temp worker company.
But the company went bust, bankruptcy arrived in 2008, and the Martins moved to a small rental. She was a blogger writing about the shame and pain of bankruptcy when the tea party movement erupted in February 2009. Jenny Beth Martin became a ground-floor convert.
By the time charges of racism and extreme rhetoric hit the tea party movement this summer, Martin was one of the movement’s most visible defenders. “Anger is okay as long as it’s channeled in the appropriate manner,” she said on CNN.
Her role in the tea party movement was featured in a documentary. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. It is a fair guess that she is one of the few residents of Cherokee County ever interviewed on Finnish television.
“It’s really a strange feeling. It’s not something I planned or intended. It’s just something that’s happened,” Martin said.
Tea Party Patriots won’t establish a headquarters anywhere near Congress. She’ll remain in Woodstock. “I try to stay out of Washington, D.C., as much as possible. This city is so corrupt,” Martin said.
Tea Party Patriots policy is determined by consensus, using group discussions on social networks. If everything goes right, she said, the movement will remain amorphous and its leadership will remain ambiguous.
This is an important point. With no figurehead to bargain with, Republicans could be hard put to find any tea party leader willing to endorse tempting, some might argue necessary, compromises with Democrats in the next two years.
I’m suspicious of anything that paper publishes, even the football scores.
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