After The Thrashing, NEA Finds Common Ground With Tea Party

The National Education Association, which pumped $40 million into political (read: Democratic Party) races this election cycle, is sounding a more conciliatory note about the tea-party movement ... for now, anyway.

Kim Anderson, the union's director of government relations, said the "tea party is certainly a new dynamic in Congress," but said it's too early to tell what impact the movement will have on the rest of the Republican members when it comes to education.

"If it amounts to getting rid of some of the onerous federal intrusion and micromanagement of schools, we're for that," Anderson said in a statement that sounds like it could have been ripped from the pages of a tea party manifesto.

But, she added, "If it means [Republicans] adopt a position of no federal role in education ... we'd oppose that. We just don't know."