Weigel

FreedomWorks campaigned against Michigan Republican Fred Upton's bid to run the Commerce committee. Other Tea Party groups campaigned for Georgia Republican Jack Kingston's bid to run the Appropriations committee.

All of these groups failed .

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) won a bruising race for the Energy and Commerce Committee, but it wasn’t easy. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who attracted criticism from the White House and fellow Republicans earlier this year for his infamous apology to BP amid the massive oil spill off the Gulf Coast, racked up endorsements from conservative members and groups... Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) beat out Appropriations Committee ranking member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) to nab the chairmanship of the spending panel. Like Barton, Lewis’s requested waiver to the GOP’s six-year rule was rejected.

This is the first case, actually, of the Tea Party getting less from incoming Republicans than liberals got from incoming Democrats in 2009. That year, liberals ousted John Dingell in the Commerce committee and installed Henry Waxman,