Star Trek

In previous threads, I pointed out how Republicans are deeply divided on key issues of the day. Here is another example in which the insiders are trying to lecture the freshman class on how they need to give up on their campaign promises:

http://www.aolnews.com/politics/article/tea-party-freshmen-in-congress-face-reality-check/19725679

"WASHINGTON (Nov. 20) -- New Republican House members had barely settled in for freshman orientation this week when their leader delivered a disorienting message.

Sure you campaigned to slash out-of-control government spending, incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner said, but one of the first votes you will cast will be to raise the debt ceiling.

"We're going to have to deal with it as adults," the head of the Republican establishment said. "Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part."

Alex Brandon, AP
Republican Majority Transition team members, from right, Rep.-elect Adam Kinzinger, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Rep. Greg Walden, Rep.-elect Tim Scott, Rep.-elect Martha Roby and Rep. Jim Jordan talk during a pause in their meeting on Capitol Hill on Nov. 9.

Welcome to Washington. In the town the tea party reviles, dozens of their newly elected representatives are learning they make have to take a lump or two if they want to succeed here.

"You come to town with the belief that you have all these opportunities to influence national policy," said Robert Walker, a former congressman who helped engineer the Republican revolution of 1994 that ended 40 years of Democratic rule in the House. "The thing we found when we came to power in 1995 was that governing is hard. When you're in the minority, you can fight great ideological battles. When you actually govern ... you have to develop the art of compromise, and that's difficult."

Conservatives coming off the euphoria of their midterm election rout of Democrats have already begun to question whether establishment GOP lawmakers will betray their mission to shrink government by slashing programs and cutting taxes. But for the 85 new House Republicans -- including 35 new to elective office and about half of whom ran with the tea party movement's blessing -- those campaign vows are about to meet up with 222 years of entrenched ways of doing things in Congress.

AOL News reached out to congressional scholars and former GOP Hill staffers for insights into what freshmen will face in their new jobs and how that differs from the campaign rhetoric that helped send them here. Among the challenges and realities awaiting them:

Appropriations. Just because lawmakers voted to ban pork-barrel earmarks in the next Congress doesn't mean they won't be asked to support big-ticket spending bills.

"All money bills will be a problem for tea partiers," said Steven Smith, a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of "The American Congress." "The Republican leadership will be asking for votes for bills that are not as conservative they want, particularly once the bills are negotiated to be acceptable to the Senate and president."

The Budget. There isn't a Republican freshman who doesn't want to balance it. Yet Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director under President George W. Bush, lists crafting a budget resolution as the single most challenging task for lawmakers.

"It is hard to put together a budget," said John Feehery, a spokesman for former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert. "It is harder to put together a budget that passes the laugh test. It is impossible to pass a budget that balances without raising taxes."

Cutting Spending and Reducing the Deficit. This is why the new class of Republicans ran. But John Pitney, a former House GOP aide who teaches political science at Claremont McKenna College in California, said they will learn that following through will come at a political price.

"Many of the freshmen may think that they can slash billions simply by going after 'waste, fraud and abuse,' " he said. "They will quickly learn that any genuine reduction in spending means that real people won't get jobs, contracts or services that they had been counting on. And they will yell. Loudly."

It also means doing the unthinkable: raising taxes.

"If congressional conservatives are serious about eliminating the deficit, they may have to cast some votes that will be very unpopular politically," said Matthew Green, a political scientist at Catholic University of America. "Many budget experts ... have noted, there is no realistic way that one can eliminate the deficit without both spending cuts and tax increases."

The Senate. As House Democrats learned in this Congress, "the Senate is where House-passed bills go to die," Green said. Thanks to arcane rules in the upper chamber and the awesome power of individual senators to gum up the works, "New lawmakers who believe they will actually be able to influence national policy may find the Senate an especially frustrating institution."

Feehery couldn't agree more. "The Senate has a mind of its own, works at its own pace and has nothing but complete contempt for the House," he said. "Very unpleasant."

Lobbyists. "Washington lobbyist" may have been the two dirtiest words in the recent campaign. But now that they're in Congress, new lawmakers will have to "spend a lot of time with lobbyists," said Ross Baker, a former Democratic Hill staffer who teaches politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "If they don't, they won't be there very long. They will have a short and unhappy congressional career. There are certain things you have to do."

Angry Constituents. All of the above can and will cause buyers remorse among voters who threw out their Democratic incumbent for what they thought was a fresh-faced Republican.

"There will always be constituents who are angry, and now they will be angry at you," Feehery warns.

His advice? "Hire a good caseworker."

Boring Bureaucracy. "The amount of time spent on arcane matters, sitting in committee hearings, going round and round with parliamentary procedures and actions, when they think that their 'mandate' means there will be action, will drive them up a wall," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

In addition to needing what one analyst has called "an infinite capacity for boredom," Ornstein said lawmakers will have to deal with "the need to get back home all the time, the need to set aside huge amounts of 'call time' to do fundraising" and knowing that "the continuing power of seniority" will leave them all but powerless.

Michael Franc, a congressional expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said new members "instinctively, intellectually understand there are a lot of institutions inside the Beltway that like big government" but "it's impossible to understand until you've been through it." "