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A4 SUNDAY, JANUARY 2, 20U THE HARTFORD COURANT WORLD NATION Tea party gets started on Hill ROD LAMKEYGETTY PHOTO Mark Meckler, right, of the Tea Party Patriots, plans to keep Congress focused on tea party priorities. "We do expect people who got elected on the tea party platform to behave in a tea party manner," he said. successfully killing a bill that would have funded the government through fiscal year 2011, as well as early implementation of the health care law. Many Senate Republicans publicly swore off earmarks, a favorite symbol of federal largesse. In the House, speaker-to-be John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced a new rule that will force lawmakers to cite constitutional authority for every piece of legislation they proposed.

But tea party leaders lost a campaign to install favored chairmen on two powerful House committees. And activists were divided over the tax deal negotiated by President Barack Obama and Republican leaders. The split spotlighted fractures within the movement. Tea Party Patriots blasted the compromise as a backroom deal. FreedomWorks was more pragmatic, supporting it as the best possible solution to keep taxes low.

FreedomWorks plans what Armey calls the "insideoutside" model: a courtship of allies on the inside, while pressuring other lawmakers with an outside blitz of e-mails and phone calls. "We didn't have that in 1995," Armey said of his days as majority leader, the last time Republicans took control of the House in a wave election. That class famously fell short of its goals, hamstrung by infighting and sinking public support. Others warn the tea party could end up like the Christian right, which emerged from the grassroots in the late 1970s but eventually lost its independence. "Those guys became an appendage of the Republican Party," said Richard Viguerie, a conservative consultant active in the religious right.

"They loved getting calls from George Bush 41 and 43 and being invited to bill signings. They became fettered. khenneesseytribune.com Test begins for activists' policies inside Beltway By Kathleen Hennessey TRIBUNE WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON As the nearly 100 new Republican lawmakers settle into their Capitol Hill digs in the coming days, some will receive a pop-in visit aimed at reminding them how they got there. "We want them to know that we know our folks helped them get elected and we're there for them," said Mark Meckler, whose group, Tea Party Patriots, is sending activists to visit lawmakers' offices hours after the swearing-in Wednesday of the 112th Congress. It's a pointed reminder for the new class, roughly half of which was elected with tea party support or have echoed the movement's call for smaller government.

Now those lawmakers are standard-bearers of the tea party's hope and ideals a responsibility activists plan to make sure is not set aside when the voting starts. Meckler's group plans to monitor the new class and fire up activists before key votes. Other tea party-affiliated groups are launching regular meetings with lawmakers, salons to discuss tea party-favored legislation and online tools that will help voters closely follow their progress. The goal is to keep the members focused on the movement's priorities slashing federal spending, opposing all tax increases, repealing the health care law and adhering to its interpretation of the Constitution and out of Washington's clutches. "We don't have unrealistic expectations," Meckler said.

"But we do expect people who got elected on the tea party platform to behave in a tea party manner." That will be no easy task. Many grassroots movements have Where the tea party thrived Midterm election winners who had ties to the tea party movement Congressional winners (district) Senate winners (state) "EI had to bet on whether they would change Washington or whether Washington would change them, I would bet on Washington," he said. Tea party leaders say they're prepared to avoid the pitfalls that have hobbled past political movements. They argue their activists are more engaged and committed. They're not advocating a single issue, but a bigger campaign to "restore America." And perhaps most notably they've proven a willingness to punish straying lawmakers at the ballot box.

"These guys know these are not people to be trifling with. They're organized and effective," said former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, whose advocacy group, FreedomWorks, is a leading organizer in the tea party movement. There was evidence that Republicans felt this pressure during December's lame-duck session of Congress. The party was largely united on issues of taxes and spending, SOURCE: Tribune Newspapers reporting TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS James Madison University, who is studying the tea party movement and its parallels to the rise of the Christian right in the 1980s and 1990s. learned just how hard it is to remain outsiders in a place run by insiders and still accomplish something, noted Martin Cohen, a professor of political science at Mexico army's failings hamper drug war remain agile and less susceptible Outmoded tactics, intelligence mishaps alarm U.S.

officials DON BARTLETTITRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS PHOTO Mexican soldiers are shown in strife-torn Ciudad Juarez in 2009. The city is now patrolled by federal police because of the army's failures. sented a demoralizing failure. Troops were eventually pulled out of Juarez and replaced with federal police officers. Calderon's strategy relies in large part on taking down capos and splintering their organizations.

In the short term, however, that has often led to more bloodletting as the battles for turf and succession escalate. The army appears to be keenly aware of its shortcomings and has expressed interest in changing the nature of its relationship with U.S. authorities. In another leaked cable, the army's top commander, Gen. Guillermo Galvan Galvan, requested more U.S.

help and acknowledged the need for rapid-deployment units that can better act on intelligence. He described frustrated efforts to capture Mexico's most wanted fugitive, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, saying the Sinaloa cartel kingpin was moving around among 10 to 15 locations and was surrounded by security circles of up to 300 men" and a network of spies that "make launching capture operations difficult." U.S. officials said the army following the navy's lead, has requested special operations training "for the first time." Galvan acknowledged the risk to his institution's prestige that comes with its involvement in the drug war. Still, Galvan said, he was reconciled to what many here see as an ominous prospect: The army anticipates fighting this treacherous war "for the next seven to 10 years." twilkmsontribune.com to corruption. At the same time, however, the naval marines' small size confines them to limited commando operations taking out targeted cartel leaders or dismantling small cells, not the massive presence needed to rein in the most widespread violence and retake lost territory such as Juarez, the eastern border state of Tamaulipas or the Golden Triangle drug bastion where Du-rango, Chihuahua and Sinaloa states meet.

Not that the army has succeeded in those missions either. "Mexicans are paying a high price for a strategy that does not seem to have much impact," said Roderic Ai Camp, an expert on the Mexican military at Clare-mont McKenna College. "It is not reducing drug consumption in the U.S., it is not reducing drug-related income for the trafficking organizations, nor is it reducing their influence in other activities," such as kidnapping and people-smuggling. "I don't see the army, or anyone else, winning this 'war' in the immediate future. In the four years since Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels shortly after assuming office in December 2006, he has deployed more than 50,000 military troops, plus some 30,000 federal police officers, to more than half of the country's 31 states.

In the diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks Web site and published in numerous newspapers, U.S. officials noted that the army's inability to contain violence in Ciudad Juarez repre By Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS MEXICO CITY Four years and 50,000 troops into President Felipe Calderon's drug war, the fighting has exposed severe limitations in the Mexican army's ability to wage unconventional warfare, tarnished its proud reputation and left the U.S. pointedly criticizing the force as "virtually blind" on the ground. The army's shortcomings have complicated the government's struggle against the narcotics cartels, as 2010 proved to be the deadliest year of the war by far. "The army has never worked in urban operations against drug trafficking, in urban cells," said Raul Benitez, a national security specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

"It's the first time it is engaged in urban warfare. It has to learn." Instead, the army often relies on numerical superiority over intelligence and has frequently fallen back on time-worn tactics, such as highway checkpoints, that are of limited use against drug traffickers, especially in cities. Checkpoints have also been the scene of serious human rights violations, including deadly shootings of civilians. The military has delivered important victories to the govern- erations and who are footing a large part of the drug-war bill. A series of recently leaked diplomatic cables revealed the United States' profound unease over Mexico's efforts, despite public assurances to the contrary, with stinging language criticizing the army as stymied by well-protected fugitive drug lords.

U.S. diplomats and Mexican intelligence officials say the Mexican military and police distrust each other, refuse to share intelligence and resist operating together, squandering important potential gains. The Mexican army appears to have lost favor with U.S. officials who turn increasingly to the navy, whose special forces are more eager to work with the Americans and small enough in number to ment by killing or capturing several senior cartel figures and confiscating large drug shipments. And putting army officers in charge of police departments across the country has helped bring relative quiet to some violence-plagued cities, such as Tijuana.

But in places such as Ciudad Juarez, where Calderon has staked his political reputation, the death toll has skyrocketed since last year. Seven of every 10 stores have been forced to shut down as a result of extortion and threats, and nearly a quarter of a million people have fled the city in the last two years. The failures have alarmed U.S. officials, who for more than a year have been training Mexican forces in counter-narcotics op SPOTLIGHT SEVERE WEATHER Storm victims pick up pieces Army troops assess damage Saturday after a tornado tore through Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. A seventh person died Saturday as a result of the storms that rumbled through Missouri, Arkansas and other states on New Year's Eve.

SUNSET HILLS, Mo. Residents from Missouri to Mississippi spent the first day of the new year assessing the damage and sifting through piles of debris after a series of destructive, fast-moving storms left at least seven people dead and dozens injured. On Saturday Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon toured Sunset Hills, a suburb of St. Louis.

"The devastation in this neighborhood was complete," Nixon said. "Many of the houses we saw that were standing had the orange on them, which means they're going to knock them down, not even try and repair them." The death toll rose to seven after an 80-year-old woman died Saturday of in juries suffered when the storm tore through Missouri. In all, four died in Missouri and three in Arkansas, and dozens of homes were destroyed. The effect of Friday's storms continued to be felt as they moved eastward Saturday, with the National Weather Service issuing a tornado watch for eight counties in Alabama and three counties in Florida. Elsewhere, in the northern Plains, a blizzard warning for most of South Dakota expired and highways reopened after more than a foot of snow fell in some spots.

CNN; Reuters contributed SGT. HEATHER DENBY U.S. ARMY PHOTO.