I knew we would be reading about this: Years Later, Armey Once Again a Power in Congress

From The New York Times:

[Dick Armey] invited incoming lawmakers who had been backed by the Tea Party to a two-day retreat in Baltimore last week, where he presented them with policy books and urged them not to submit to the ways of Washington. (He and wife, Susan, also spoke on how to avoid letting Congress ruin a marriage.)

As new lawmakers, many of them with no political experience, come to Washington, many groups and would-be leaders of the Tea Party are vying to influence them. Several held competing freshman orientations over the weekend, in advance of the official party orientation this week.

But Mr. Armey is uniquely poised: he has the legislative experience that the Tea Party groups can’t offer, but the Tea Party credibility that Republicans can’t claim.

There is particular irony in Mr. Armey — who has spent three decades in Washington, where he has become one of the city’s most enduring insiders — mentoring a movement that wants to hold on to its outsider ethos.

Elected to Congress in 1984, he was at the forefront the last time Republicans stormed the Capitol, helping write the Contract with America that set the party’s agenda in 1994, and becoming majority leader, the second in command, the following year.

Even those who call themselves friends say there is potential peril for the Tea Party in the relationship.

“A lot of people are trying to run to the front of this parade,” said Vin Weber, a former House colleague of Mr. Armey’s. “But anything that begins to make them look like another Washington-based political organization is going to take a lot of wind out of their sails.”

He has told Republicans that their victory is less a mandate than a second chance for them to show that they can govern well. It is something of a second chance for him, as well.

Mr. Armey aspired to be speaker of the House, but hurt his chances when he joined and then denied being involved in an attempted coup against Speaker Newt Gingrich. “His credibility was shot with a lot of the members,” said John Feehery, a former top aide to the Republican leadership.

An economist by training and an evangelist of the Austrian school of free market economics, Mr. Armey represents the libertarian wing of the Republican Party more than the social conservative wing. Since leaving Congress, he has complained that Republicans focused too much on social issues and not enough on fiscal conservatism.

The concern about spending that propelled the Tea Party wave has made his brand of conservatism popular again.

There have also been some eyebrows raised at the idea of a former Republican Conference chairman and majority leader advising new House members to be skeptical about the leadership. But many Republicans credit Mr. Armey for recognizing the potential of the Tea Party movement early. “If they hadn’t had Armey working for them, it would have been a bloodbath for us,” Mr. Feehery said.

Mr. Armey was among the first to endorse Tea Party candidates like Marco Rubio, the senator-elect from Florida. FreedomWorks, through its political arm, also helped organize Tea Party groups.

A man of many aphorisms, Mr. Armey likes to say, “Washington is a city of young idealists and old cynics.” In his telling, you lose your youthful idealism when you worry too much about fitting into the establishment. Speaking to the new lawmakers in Baltimore, he framed it as a stark choice: embrace the movement that got you elected or become “hack politicians, going along to get along.”

He advised them to adopt what he calls an “inside-outside” strategy. The revolution of 1994, he argues, failed because Republicans had a game only inside Congress; the trick is to have lawmakers inside pushing legislation and grass-roots groups supporting the cause from outside.