DC Republicans aim to tame tea party freshman

Insurgent Republican candidates hoping to win election to the United States Senate have made one thing clear: They are not coming to Washington to make friends.

Tea Party-backed contender Ken Buck in Colorado has promised that “the freshman class will challenge the status quo in the Republican conference.” In a secretly recorded phone conversation with a third-party candidate, Nevada’s Sharron Angle slammed the GOP “machine” for having “lost their principle.” During his primary contest, Senate hopeful Rand Paul hedged on whether or not he’d support fellow Kentuckian Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (a statement he has since reversed.) “I want people to know that I'm a distinct person,” he said at the time.

But, while these potential new members of the Senate defeated establishment-favored GOP contenders in their states’ primaries by promising to upset the status quo in Washington, former and current Republican aides aren’t expecting a political earthquake. They say they’re confident that McConnell will deftly handle the new conservative arrivals by incorporating them — and their ideas — into the larger caucus.

“Senator McConnell will move quickly to include them,” said a GOP strategist who is close to the Republican leader. “The worst thing you can do to somebody who's got a lot of energy and a lot of ideas is to wall them off and not let them be expressed.”

Key to McConnell’s success, added a former GOP leadership aide, will be to harness and channel the Tea Party agenda “in a way that’s productive rather than destructive or harmful to Senate Republicans or the country in general.