“It’s not the tea party caucus,” House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) told NBC’s Brian Williams in a must-watch look inside Congress. “It would be more what I would describe as hard-line conservatives who want more. I don’t blame them.”

Boehner’s right. And if you look at the final vote on Boehner’s bill last week, you’ll understand.

Of the 22 Republicans who wound up opposing the bill, just 11 were members of the 60-person House Tea Party Caucus, and just ten were freshmen.

Given that more than one-third of the House GOP Conference are freshmen, the fact that 10 of 22 Republican opponents of Boehner’s plan came from that group isn’t all that shocking. If 35 percent of all House Republicans are tea partiers, it’s significant — but not overwhelming — that they made up 45 percent of the opposition.