WASHINGTON — Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama knew his own power when he stood face to face with Speaker John A. Boehner in the cloakroom off the House floor.
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Representative Jeff Landry of Louisiana, left, found it hard to tell the leadership, “No, sir.”
But Mr. Brooks, one of the freshman Republicans who blazed their way into Congress on the promise to tame the national deficit, did not have good news for his leader, who needed his vote to pass debt limit legislation. He stood fast, as well, when other senior lawmakers implored him to get on board with the bill.
On Friday morning, Mr. Brooks got the call that changed his mind; his demands had been met, the House whip told him. Off he went to high-five his chief of staff, who preferred, he said, to shake hands.
There is an old Texas saying, often applied to politics, of the need to “dance with the one that brung ya.” But many of the Tea Party-leaning freshmen who helped the Republican Party take control of the House last November are here to polka while their leadership is begging them to waltz.
The Republican freshmen of the 112th Congress may never see the legislation of their dreams become law, but the scope of their victory in reshaping the debt ceiling bill to reflect the fiscal hawkishness of the most conservative House members cannot be overstated.
This victory was presaged by a fight over a short-term spending plan earlier this year in which the freshmen demanded far larger spending cuts than the Republican leaders would have imagined. The power of the 87 freshmen appears sealed, at least for now.
“Certainly there’s satisfaction in it,” Mr. Brooks said of his legislative victory. “That’s why I ran for office. You want to help your country.”
It was a mere eight months ago that Mr. Boehner and his leadership team welcomed the new Republicans — many of whom had never held public office — into the fold of his conference, assuring them that they were the future of the party. “I think it’s going to reinvigorate our democracy,” Mr. Boehner said then of the Tea Party, “and be a really good thing for the country.”
But the qualities that helped the majority of the freshman Republicans cruise to victory in 2010 — their promises to challenge the orthodoxy of their own party and offer fealty to no one — have been an impediment to Mr. Boehner as he tries to negotiate a deal with Democrats to prevent a financial crisis and possible deep damage to an already weak economy.
When the debt fight arrived, “It was a huge opportunity,” Mr. Brooks said, to make a significant change to the nation’s fiscal policy.
Mr. Brooks read the bill and immediately found it distasteful, because there was not a balanced budget component. So did a lot of his colleagues, a great many of them, though not all, freshmen.
The traditional methods of browbeating members — offering them treats for their districts — is frowned upon in this new majority. But the new House members also have little truck with the other time-tested technique of persuasion, appealing to party loyalty.
Mr. Brooks recalled Friday how his senior House colleagues had announced at a meeting: “This is a team sport. Get on the team.
“Sure,” he said. “I’m a member of the Republican team. But the more important team is the American team. Never have I given my vote to somebody else just because they are somebody else.”
Late Thursday night, Mr. Brooks met with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House whip, with a group of other lawmakers, and told him bluntly that he needed a balanced budget amendment within the basic bill, rather than as part two of a two-step plan. Mr. McCarthy, he said, had to sleep on it, then called him Friday morning to say, “ ‘If we do it are you still on board,’ and I said, ‘Absolutely.’ ”
In the broadest terms, the Tea Party freshmen have been victorious in changing the national conversation into an almost singular discussion of debt, and creating a consensus that America must do more to live within its means. But it is still not clear whether they will translate their passion into long-term legislative and political accomplishments — or overreach and undercut their credibility and influence.
“Zealots are great on the campaign trail,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton, “but a huge problem when it comes to governance. They often don’t believe in the art of a deal, even with their allies. If they are not tamed, they can eat their own party alive.”
But the freshmen have more to consider than their own party. They also felt the heat from Tea Party activists, including FreedomWorks, which is considering its options for 2012.
“Six months from now, we might look at this vote and say, ‘Wow, that was the vote,’ ” said Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, who compared it to the vote on the Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2008.
The current impasse in Congress has often been compared to 1995, when a Republican revolution in the House led by Speaker Newt Gingrich ultimately brought about a coup attempt and eventually Mr. Gingrich’s resignation. In this case, at least so far, there is great sympathy for Mr. Boehner among even his most intransigent members, who say that it is the system they are fighting against far more than the House leadership.
But this group of freshmen view the measure of success a bit differently than their predecessors: They are helpers to the speaker in their view, as long as he does things their way.
“The hardest moment was to look my leadership in the eye and tell them ‘No sir,’ ” said Representative Jeff Landry of Louisiana. “They were pretty agitated. I’m beat up pretty bad.”
But, Mr. Landry said, the fact that he held out until the last minute served his leadership well.
“When their backs were up against a wall we said, ‘Let’s see if we can help get you off the wall,’ ” he said. “Leadership is not about getting what you want. It’s about getting what you need. So, in the end leadership did its job.”
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