Plum Line: House GOP and Romney

New over at the Plum Line, I ask whether Mitt Romney is about to go through a rough patch thanks to Tea Partiers in the House GOP conference.

There's a long history of coordination, and lack of coordination, between Congressional parties and presidential candidates. The short story is that most Members of Congress tend to put their own goals far ahead of those of presidential campaigns, so when there's conflict -- which of course isn't all the time -- they don't mind leaving the presidential candidate behind. We're in a strong party era, but one of the good tests for whether our strong parties are also non-hierarchical is whether House Republicans will defer to Romney. Of course, he's not the nominee yet in any formal way, so it's not such a good test yet.

I suppose it's worth noting that 14 GOP Senators and 60 Republican Members of the House have endorsed Romney at this point.