Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from an article written by Alexander Bolton and originally appeared on The Hill. I have great respect and admiration for Senator DeMint and believe that his voice is essential on the Senate Finance Committee.
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In a sign of the growing power of conservatives within the Senate Republican Conference, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) held a rare meeting with Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on Monday evening.
The topic: an opening on the most powerful committee in the Senate, the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over taxes, trade, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
“It was a very positive meeting,” DeMint said.
“It did come up and I expressed an interest — it’s where all the issues I came to work on in Congress are,” DeMint said of the opening on the Finance panel. “I was considered a legislative nerd in the House because I worked on tax reform, Social Security reform, healthcare, Medicare. Those are really the issues I want to work on.”
McConnell is expected to decide by the beginning of next week who gets the spot.
DeMint and McConnell were antagonists for much of the 111th Congress, when DeMint pressed his leader to support a moratorium on earmarks and McConnell, a member of the Appropriations Committee, resisted.
McConnell’s consideration of DeMint for the Finance slot is a sign their relationship has improved significantly since Election Day. It also signals that DeMint’s stature within the Senate GOP conference has grown with the emergence of the Tea Party as a national force.
DeMint, a leader in the conservative grassroots movement, defied his leader in the 2010 Kentucky Republican primary by endorsing Sen. Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, while McConnell backed the establishment’s choice, former Secretary of State Trey Grayson. Paul won.
He was also an early supporter of Tea Party star Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). DeMint has steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to help elect conservative Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) through his leadership political action committee, the Senate Conservatives Fund.
Paul, Lee and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) joined DeMint in forming the Senate Tea Party Caucus at the beginning of the year. And most of the chamber’s conservatives attend the Republican Steering Committee lunches DeMint hosts each week.
