( CNN ) -- House Republicans just went through the pageantry of the changing of the guard with their leadership elections . But new names on the door wo n't change their party 's priorities : protecting special interests , the ultra-wealthy and their own perks at the expense of middle-class Americans . The term `` Republican leadership '' has become the biggest oxymoron in politics . If we learned one thing from Republicans ' elections , it 's that their leadership simply follows their tea party base in an unceasing march to the right . Following their losses at the ballot box in 2012 , Republicans rolled out a post-mortem calling for a move to the middle , recognizing that their days as a competitive national party were numbered if they continued on their current rightward path . Since then , we have seen Republicans across the country do the exact opposite . They have grown more paranoid , more insular and more fearful . It 's that fear of the tea party that shut down the government to disastrous consequences last year , and it 's that fear that just caused them to replace one leader of the Republican shutdown with another . In 2011 , when John Boehner took over as speaker , he was billed as a moderate . And Eric Cantor was called mainstream . But both alternated between being hamstrung by and kowtowing to their right wing and drove their majority off a cliff . And the numbers speak for themselves : after three and a half years , they have turned Congress into the least-trusted institution in America . Gallup now pegs confidence in Congress at just 7 % â€ ” the lowest confidence rating for any institution ever recorded by Gallup in the past 40 years . With ratings that abysmal , one might think that House Republicans might use a turnover in leadership as an opportunity to steer their sinking ship in a new direction . Think again . Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise are members of the same tea party club and were elected on pledges of fealty to the tea party agenda . And that agenda will keep turning off the American public , dragging their ratings down and dragging Republicans further and further outside the mainstream . The tragedy is that the middle class pays the price . How did we get to this place , where the House majority continues to move so far from the center of American politics that they can no longer see it ? NBC News provides some clues , finding in its polling that `` the Tea Party is in a VERY different place on key issues '' than even other , mainstream Republicans . Take immigration as an example . Just 19 % of tea party Republicans believe immigration helps the United States , compared to 47 % of the country at large . With House Republicans beholden to this tiny minority of the country at large , they will continue to drag their party to the right â€ ” and their so-called leadership will have no choice but to follow , if they want to keep their jobs . You can change the names on the door , but the out-of-touch agenda remains the same . If the country is to have any hope of combating the serious challenges facing us and creating an economy that works to lift up middle-class families , we need more than just a change of figureheads in the House . We need to change the House majority . Join us on Facebook.com/CNNOpinion .
Senator Steve Israel says the Republicans ' new leaders have same party priorities . Democrats : Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise were elected on pledges of fealty to the tea party . Republicans , he says , just replaced one leader of the GOP shutdown with another .