Midterms 2010: Tea Party Candidates Not Backing Down

July 12, 2010 -- When Rick Barber and Martha Roby square off Tuesday for the Republican nomination in an Alabama congressional district, they'll be representing a larger contest: one that pits the Tea Party's enthusiasm and red meat rhetoric against national GOP leaders' strategy to take control of Congress in November.

Barber, 35, who has served as a Marine, is a Tea Party activist who has drawn national attention for a series of Internet ads that liken President Obama's economic policies to slavery and suggest it might be time for patriots to "gather your armies." Roby, 33, is a two-term Montgomery City Councilwoman who has the backing of top Republican congressional leaders in her effort to become the second woman ever elected to the House of Representatives from Alabama.

The runoff election in the Alabama district, which stretches south from Montgomery to the Florida state line, is the latest in a series of contests this year in which national Republican leaders weighed in against candidates claiming the Tea Party mantle — signaling doubts about whether the movement that galvanized Republican opposition to Obama can attract the centrist Democrats and independent voters it will take to win in November.

According to conventional political wisdom, candidates work to win over those swing voters by tacking toward the center once the primaries are over. In several states where Tea Party candidates have won, however, that hasn't happened.

• In Nevada last week, Sharron Angle, the GOP nominee against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, had to apologize for calling the $20 billion escrow account that Obama forced BP to establish for Gulf spill victims "a slush fund." She also threatened to take Reid to court for reviving an earlier version of the Angle campaign's website — one that includes her stands on eliminating the Department of Education and phasing out Social Security.

• In Kentucky, Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul made waves with his own BP remarks — he called Obama's criticism of the company's drilling operations "un-American" — and with his assertion that private companies should not be required to comply with federal civil rights laws.