The Tea Party in Congress is dead, if it were ever alive.
Republican opponents of increased government spending have caved in to a plan to avoid a government shutdown crisis and accept a continuing resolution of at least six months, enshrining spending at the high levels they formerly opposed.
The mood is not dissimilar to the banking panic period around the election of 2008, when Republicans caved in to TARP in order to get past the crisis. They got past it alright, and deservedly lost everything in the process.
The whole point now, they say, is to get past the danger the upcoming election represents, and the lame duck session, periods when government is most responsive to, and most dismissive of, politics, and it is politics which the so-called conservatives now fear. It doesn't occur to them that one of the rewards of an election is the free hand given to the winners to do the will of the people. Gov. Scott Walker's victories on behalf of the people of Wisconsin evidently mean nothing to them. Fear of a lame duck session is simply proof that so-called Tea Partiers in Congress don't have the courage of their convictions.
The election, on the contrary, is the perfect opportunity to crucify the Democrats on the issue of spending, and especially their intransigence on it. Nothing focuses the mind like when your job is on the line.
Well guess what, Republicans? Your job is on the line, too. And I have a keyboard, and an internet connection.
Instead of postponing the issue to next March, outrageous spending should be front and center in October when Americans spend a few days paying attention to it for once. Republicans obviously have no stomach for such fighting. But Democrats do, which is why they win.
Making Democrats take the fall for increased spending and taxes may be difficult work, but if you can't figure out how to do that, then quit, but don't piss down our necks and tell us it's rainin'.
The truth appears to be that the so-called conservatives can see the handwriting on the wall. They have a candidate for president who won't cut spending if elected because that candidate, Gov. Mitt Romney, thinks cutting spending would put the country into depression. So-called Tea Partiers in Congress evidently agree with this Keynesian analysis. They'd rather look like they support this absurdity for political ends than do the right thing for the country. They don't want to continue in lonely isolation under a Romney administration. And they certainly don't want to be held responsible for a depression.
In taking this step, the conservatives no longer deserve our support, or our respect.
It's just one more reason why alliance with the Republican Party is the kiss of death for conservatism.
The Christian Science Monitor has the story, including these excerpts, here:
In a bid to avoid a potential government shutdown, several of the House’s most conservative Republicans say they would be willing to go along with a six-month extension of government funding, which is currently set to run out at the end of September, at levels they’ve voted against in the past. ...
The idea is spearheaded by Sens. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, the most prominent tea party figure in Congress, and Lindsey Graham (R), South Carolina's senior senator. It was laid out in a letter signed by 20 Republicans to House and Senate GOP leaders on Wednesday. But support for the move is wider than the initial signatories: Even Rep. Justin Amash (R) of Michigan, who voted against the Republican budget proposal in March because he said it cut too little from government spending, said he would vote in favor.
And here's a little news flash for you: Lindsey Graham is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of the Tea Party, or a conservative.
As for Rep. Amash, I guess your precious "consistency" has its limits, eh Justin?
