Who will support the Patriot Act?

The Patriot Act is up for renewal. Democrats lambasted it when Bush was president, but they've shown little desire to repeal it since. Republicans have always supported it. The Tea Party claims to want to reduce the size and scope of government, but will they vote against the Patriot Act?

Who will support the Patriot Act?

For extra credit: will they even bother debating it?

UPDATE:

Maybe I put this poll up too late. Here's the latest news:

"House Republicans suffered an embarrassing setback Tuesday when they fell seven votes short of extending provisions of the Patriot Act, a vote that served as the first small uprising of the party's tea-party bloc.

The bill to reauthorize key parts of the counter-terrorism surveillance law, which expire at the end of the month, required a super-majority to pass under special rules reserved for non-controversial measures.

But it fell short of the required two-thirds after 26 Republicans bucked their leadership, eight of them freshman lawmakers elected in November's midterm elections. With most Democrats opposing the extension, the final tally was 277 members in favor of extension, and 148 opposed."

As it stands right now, enough Democrats and tea party members opposed the bill that it failed. Granted, it needed a 2/3 majority, so the majority voted for it, but I'm still amazed and impressed. But don't expect it to stay that way.

"The Republicans who control the House made plans to bring the measure back for a quick vote later this month under normal rules, requiring only a simple majority for passage. They blamed House Democrats for the bill's downfall, noting that they provided the lion's share of votes against a bill that President Obamasupports."

Just the change the rules and blame the other guys. So far the tea party is proving more potent than I expected. But this debate is far from over as the Senate has yet to address it and the House will visit it again.

UPDATE II:

It turns out that few tea party supporters voted against the reauthorization.

"Of those eight freshmen, it appears that all were Tea Party-supported candidates. It's encouraging to see these officials stick to their professed ideals. I hope that this is a continuing phenomenon. According to this article at MSNBC, though, at least forty house seats went to Tea Party-backed candidates."

In other words, most of the tea party freshmen voted just like their establishment Republican partners. I'm a little surprised at how few Democrats supported Obama on this.