Tea Party to Lamar Alexander: Stop Compromising

By FRANCIS X. CLINES

J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressLamar Alexander speaks to reporters after a bipartisan agreement was reached on lowering rates for government student loans. July 18, 2013. 

When it comes to flexing political muscle, Tea Party zealots don’t hesitate to be downright threatening, as in their warning to Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee that he’d better retire from office because “our great nation can no longer afford compromise and bipartisanship, two traits for which you have become famous.” The warning was in an open letter from a score of Tea Party groups, most of them county operations in the senator’s home state. They said he would face a right-wing primary challenge if he should opt to run next year for a third term.

The missive cautioning the senator to “retire with dignity” had all the grace of that wrapped dead fish signifying doom in “The Godfather.” The Tea Party bosses said the nation had no need of politicians “actively undermining” their conservative agenda. “We have serious doubts about your ability to fix our problems since you have played such a significant role in creating them,” the letter declared in summary of the senator’s rich career in politics and academia.

There was no immediate reaction from Mr. Alexander. Anyone who has watched the senator on past campaign hustings has seen him face up to the occasional heckler with some wit, candor and anger, if that was called for. It would be good to see touches of all three qualities whenever he responds to the Tea Party cabal’s plan for his future. The alternative option, of course, is to head farther to the right, much like the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and so many other fearful Republican incumbents.

The idea that evidence of “compromise and bipartisanship” should ever be rated a shortcoming in a politician is remarkable. It’s a corollary of Ronald Reagan’s grand dictum that “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Mr. Alexander played a major role this year in several Senate compromises, notably helping to break the impasse over student loan rates and supporting the Senate’s immigration reform measure. If nothing else, the Tea Party letter is a worthy trophy for him from the Republicans’ intramural war.