What Happens To Tea Party Members In Congress?

There are lots of opinions about why members of the Senate aren't joining the Tea Party Caucus. Senators DeMint, Paul, and Lee joined the caucus this past week, but Senators Toomey, Rubio, and Johnson, all Tea Party favorites, declined. The question is why? The bigger question is, does it matter?

The why seems obvious. Three swing-state Senators, elected in a conservative electorate, may not want to be totally defined by that electorate. Makes sense, even if they generally agree with them. Does it matter though? Well, at least some in the Tea Party don't seem to care. They see their movement as grassroots, and not needing a caucus.

All of this gets at the reality, that the Tea Party is not one movement, and is both astroturf and grassroots at the same time. The Tea Party, at the ground level, is a collection of different types of conservatives, depending on the region. At the macro-level, it is both a grassroots movement, and the FreedomWorks funded corporate shrill it was created as. The members of the Tea Party who are now in Congress will soon show which they are. If I had to guess, they will behave more like FreedomWorks than the purists of conservative thinking in the street. In the opinion of this writer, neither is a good option. One side would gut the social safety net, the other would re-distribute wealth to the wealthy.