It is true — so true — as Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, argues in the Washington Post, that the doyens of the liberal press have been attempting to paint the Tea Party as the villains of the debt-ceiling confrontation. But this shouldn’t surprise. From the inception of the movement, liberals and Democrats have purported to see dark and dangerous trends afoot. The movement has been insulted as stupid and radical — and slandered as racist and nativist.
Perhaps liberals have a hard time understanding the tea-party phenomenon because it’s so at odds with the spirit of the times. Those funny 18th-century costumes they sport at rallies have a deeper meaning than simply a reference to the original Boston Tea Party. Unlike most 20th- and 21st-century political activists, tea-party members are not asking for anything from the federal government — not “full funding” for this or that program, not more research for this or that disease, not more tax exemptions for this or that industry. They simply ask that the federal government not spend more than it collects in taxes and not continue its suicidal expansion.
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The tea-party activists are excellent patriots, but during the debt-ceiling confrontation, some have displayed an obtuse and even vain rigidity.
Judson Phillips, for example, argues that “Boehner is not listening to those who elected him and is now pushing a plan with almost nonexistent budget cuts.” He urges a no vote. Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) vowed that he would not vote to raise the debt ceiling until a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution passed. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) explained his unwillingness to back Boehner’s bill this way: “I really truly worry that the debt is one of the single greatest threats to the United States of America. That we’re talking about a problem that is multitrillion dollars in its depth and I think we ought to be cutting more. I just don’t think it goes far enough.”
Of course the Boehner bill doesn’t solve the debt problem. The debt is 98.6 percent of GDP. A debt of that magnitude will take years to tame. Unlike debt-ceiling increases in the past, this one at least sets the precedent of requiring dollar-for-dollar cuts.
The Democrats control the Senate. The presidency is occupied by a Democrat. Those two uncomfortable realities severely limit the good that can be accomplished at this moment.
But precisely because the stakes are so high — Chaffetz is right about the threat — the overriding concern must be to change those realities. And so the first responsibility of members of Congress as well as grassroots activists should be to do nothing that will impede the election of a Republican president and Republican-majority Senate in 2012. If Republicans control Congress and the presidency after 2012, they will have unlimited opportunities to cut the budget, decrease the debt, change the rules that permit government spending to increase on autopilot, and (one hopes) adopt the kind of pro-business policies that will encourage rather than impede economic growth.
Bill Buckley famously (did he say anything that wasn’t famous?) declared that he would always support the most-right-leaning candidate who could win. Similarly, we should support those policies and tactics (yes, it’s not a dirty word) that are most likely to lead to good outcomes for the country.
Speaker Boehner, dealing with a remarkably ideological president, could not get a compromise. Despite dueling primetime speeches, it remains unclear how voters will interpret the impasse. But the president has got to be worried that he seems quite prepared to bring down economic ruin on the country if he is denied a tax increase on “millionaires and billionaires” (by which he means those earning more than $200,000, by the way). He owns the lousy economy, the budget deadlock, and the debt. Unless . . .
Unless Republicans play into his hands by seeming equally indifferent to the results of a failure to raise the debt ceiling. And for what grand purpose? Because it doesn’t solve our problems all at once? That would be a Republican default in many senses of the word. It would permit Obama to share blame about the state of the economy with them. He and a compliant press will use every opportunity to attribute anything that goes wrong in American life from now until November 2012 to Republican intransigence on the debt ceiling.
One of the ways Democrats operated over the years was to pocket what they could get and circle back for more later. They didn’t get Hillarycare, but they got expansions of Medicaid, and then S-CHIP, and finally Obamacare. It was a successful tactic. Republicans should learn from it.
We who have been watching closely do note, however, that the "Tea Party"* is the group treating the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government" like chips in a mid-week poker game. Maybe they are not "villains", but those associated with the Tea Party* have certainly displayed shocking ignorance of the investment markets and a cultural parochialism that is extremely dispiriting. We have been brought to the brink of another economic cascade by know-nothing ideologues obsessed with their own reflection.
* Tea Party = For want of a more accurate term, that collection of political neophytes coalescing with incoherent noise and great fury around a partial reading of the US Constitution, an outsized fondness for American reactionary mythology, and period costumes.
I couldn't agree more. Far, far better to be a political sophisticate rallying around a complete elimination of the constitution and an excessive fondness for your share of the money stolen from your betters.
I think you ought to go with a more accurate monniker. How about "robobraindead"? The Tea Party did not bring us to the edge of financial collapse. I do not recall the Tea Party asking for trillions in new spending the past 2 years, do you?
As it seems numbers aren't your expertise, perhaps a bit of insight is required: If your outflow exceeds your income, then your upkeep will be your downfall. It seems you seek, and prefer, a long-term downfall for our country. The fact you aren't the least bit embarrassed by this is glaring commentary on the state of education in this country.
To know that the best we can do is a less than 2% decrease in spending that Obama has increased 31% is sad, to say the least. Nevertheless, we cannot force a constitutional amendment on another house that is guaranteed to have at least 34 idealogues who will vote against it, and suffer the blame for the consequences. Our day is coming - let's not blow it.
This sounds like Krauthammer advising long ball. Give Obama another couple of Trillion dollars in play money now, accept similar "cuts" (cuts that will never materialize anyway) spread out over a decade. Think about it, Mona. Everybody says "wait til 2013." What credibility will the Republicans have when asking for our vote in 2012?
I think the "Tea Party" (in quotes because there is no Tea Party, but many tea parties) would not hinder a good compromise over perfection. The problem is, the Boehner plan isn't a good compromise, it adds trillions more to the debt over the next 10 years. It's bad.
Bravo Mona - you are absolutely correct. The tea party appears to be succumbing to vanity and ambition.
Let us pray they don't take the GOP - and the country - down with it.
Bachmann is just a radical, self-promoting, vainglorious, arrogant, loud, and obnoxious demagogue. God I hope she gets crushed in each and every primary.
Time for the pragmatists to assert their control over the party.
This is so much like the TARP fiasco that started the Teaparty. Another claim the world will end if something isn't done.
From baseline there are no "cuts" at all, this is sham and the status quo will go on. Boehner delivered a better bill last week and the administration gets away with putting nothing on the table at all. When it does get killed in the Senate are we saying the political case gets stronger for the GOP? Why didn't this happen last week with CCB?
The GOP should be the ones on strike waiting for a serious bill to emerge from the administration, "where is the plan?" The illusion has been created that dropping tax increases which never happens in ceiling debates was a great concession of Obama and Reid. The media of course is owned and this is what is put out 24/7.
Maybe it's time for Boehner to get with the future instead of the past. The "cuts" are less than 25 billion in the current budget year, the Teaparty is right.
The long game being contemplated by the Republican elites is to insult their base, curry favor with "moderates" and Democrats and hope that they can cobble together a large enough coalition of reasonable people, excluding us no nothing ideologue purists, that they will hold the House in 2012 and capture the Senate and Presidency.
This sounds a lot like the McCain strategy that failed to defeat Obama the first time. Perhaps I am too obtuse to understand why it will work this time.
As for the markets, markets go up and down for all sorts of reasons. If you really want to see a spectacular market crash, just keep on this spending trajectory until we become Greece (or California). It will make the crash of 1929 look like a minor fender bender.
I think we should cut the Dept. Of Defense 50% immediately, NOTHING will restrain Current/Future Presidents from overusing the Military more than simply not having enough to do these 'Regime Changes'.
While I am not a Tea Party activist I think I understand where they are coming from. For decades there has been blather about balanced budgets and spending cuts and always the budget is wildly out of balance and "cuts" turn out to be increases that are some tiny percentage less than originally set. And the debt just balloons.
Today we face a number of bleak outcomes in consequence of the irresponsible spending of this government. There are people who have been warning of this for many years. There have even been a few politicians who tried to do something about it but they were simply ignored. But today the consequences which were decades in the future now appear to be, at best, only a handful of years away and maybe much closer than that.
I do not believe it is ideological purity or vanity that is driving the bulk of the Tea Party. Neither is it ignorance or naivite. It is fear bordering on terror that drives them. They have lived in the freest, wealthiest most powerful nation in history and they can see that coming to an end and they see not just themselves but their descendants living a poorer (perhaps much poorer) life as a result.
I believe most Tea Party activists understand the political reality. I also think that they believe that the ONLY thing that promises a peaceful resolution to the predicament the nation faces is to apply constant and unrelenting pressure on their representatives. I think that most Tea Party activists understand that they will not get what they want this year because the political situation will simply not allow it. But I also think they believe that they must put real fear into these representatives and into as many in the electorate as they can in the hope that this will spur enough to act to effect a massive change come November, 2012.
Is this a risky business? It certainly is. Is it worth it to risk so much in an effort to prevent a fiscal catastrophe? If the situation is as dire as it appears then the answer seems to me to be "yes". And if the answer is yes then the upset that some are experiencing is irrelevant and might even be desireable because come 2012 it is going to take a whole lot of upset people voting to end the impasse one way or the other. The gamble is that the majority of these will vote for fiscal responsibility and, given the state of the electorate, I think the outcome is very much in doubt. But if the Tea Party people had stayed home and stayed mum nothing would have happened. And that would guarantee disaster.
That takes a bit of patience, you know, what you've done over there.
You're NOT a tea partier, yet, somehow, you vowed to yourself to REALLY get to understand, as best you can, a group of strangers who appear to think somewhat differently than you. Thank you.
Your post is the most stark example of the political realities facing this nation at this new paradigm moment in our nation's existence.
The establishment Republicans, who have, over a course of decades, excelled at listening to themselves talk a real good game, CANNOT ACCEPT that the country is moving further to the right than they ever predicted.
The reason for this, of course, is brute snobbishness. Many establishment crowd members-in-good-standing NEVER trusted that the citizenry was SMART ENOUGH to grasp conservative concepts, so many of these folk simply hoped for the best when they talked into their media ether.
Suddenly, they see themselves in the mirror at rallies, and they reflexively retreat into the cozy confines of their establishment cocoon, free from the zealotry of the strident.
Who are the TEA PARTY members?
Average Americans, sitting around thinking exactly what Mona Charen thought when she started her career:
Yes. I see an evil beast that must be starved because it cannot be killed any other way. I see the EU, China, and the US economies as nothing more than interdependent bubbles of foolish Keynesian economics that are all about to burst no matter what we do. I see a 40% forced cut in the US budget starting next month as a feature not a bug. I see legions of public labor union members furloughed and unable to pay union dues to the Obama reelection campaign. As an added bonus, I see regulatory agencies completely unable to enforce their destructive regulations on the productive people of this country.
I honestly think a good deal of the political class (including the staff at NR) fear cutting spending for two reasons:
1. Even though they are not politicians, Washington largesse certainly finds its way into their coffers
2. If cutting spending is as easy as just telling the House of Representatives to do their job and not originate a spending bill that doesn't include major cuts, then what would all of these people write about anymore?
Many people have been saying that the can will be kicked down the road until the road ends in a brick wall. I think thanks to people like Mona Charen, and many establishment others, this cannot be avoided. Forever we have heard of cuts and balances and cuts and reducing, but it hasn't happened in modern times. Because forever we have been told this is the best we can do.
And now I believe it. I think the best we can do is run headlong into a brick wall. Hopefully enough conservatives will survive the coming disaster to rebuild some semblance of a republic somewhere, and maybe, if I'm alive, I'll move there.
The issue with this or most any deal is that it permits more spending and a small mirage of cuts to be named later. Small business owners are not permitted an increase in credit if they'll only promise to eventually square up old debt. That scheme is only workable under Barney Frank / Chris Dodd home ownership programs.
The elitist left is driving the nation to financial destruction in pursuit of their own power. Real Americans have had enough of it.
1. If the debt limit is not raised, then we win now and don't need to rely on the next election. The debt--not default, not any one specific deficit, not taxes, not spending, but the debt itself--is the problem.
2. If my representative votes to raise the debt, then he won't get re-elected and the Democrats will control the government again.
3. I believe in a "future" solution to the debt as much as I believe in the dust covered sign at my local tavern that reads "Free beer tomorrow." The supposedly conservative party has the opportunity to torpedo funding for the biggest grab of individual freedom in the history of this country (Obamacare), if that isn't incentive to curtail the debt, then nothing is. If the Republican's don't hold firm on the debt now, then they never will.
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