An Odd Thought About the Tea Party and the Sequester Drama--

Okay, we're in the middle of the sequester, and when this thing was signed back when, the idea was that a balanced solution to resolve the deficit, which included both spending cuts and revenues, would be cobbled together as a replacement for it, because the particular cuts indicated here were so sucktastic that supposedly even the House Republicans would just hate the hell out of them and want something more sensible--sound about right?

But this didn't happen. And the Senate, whom Speaker of the House John Boehner recently warned should "get off their asses", actually shot down a proposal (well, McConnell filibustered it) so that isn't happening. And while Boehner wants to act like the very solution to the debt show-down of summer '11 in which he got 98% of what he wanted is a big old mystery to him now (how shall we now live, and how much can Obama be blamed?), it kind of looks like he isn't working very hard to do anything about it because the House has for the most part, not been around to do anything about it.

Hm. This is beginning to look like a matter of design, isn't it? You have to hate taxes an awful lot, and be really skeptical of government, to think that the best thing to do is just start gutting it, bemoaning the existing debt, and not then do anything to either start paying down the debt, or make up the deficits by revenues to fund programs that US citizens really do want.  But--and this is a meaningful "but"--how many of their constituents are going to feel that way? Or are "Team Austerity" really just playing to a small group of scary Tea Party-types who they worry will primary (gasp!) even McConnell and Boehner themselves, if some actual effective legislating seemed to get underway?

I know that some Republicans on the Hill might feel like the Tea Partiers especially did them a solid in 2010, but let's face it, Seymour, Mr. Mushnik is missing and you know what your little friend feeds on, amirite?  Sure, you have some people rooting for a government shutdown in a month--but there are a greater number of people who actually don't want to bleed the government--they know what it's for! (More perfect union, general welfare, common defense, tra-la). And they wouldn't be very impressed if their representatives in Washington made the mistake of feeding the monsters of the party instead of just being the guys they sort of were hoping would do their jobs, make sensible legislation, and not send the country into another recession.

I'm suggesting that it isn't really worth it, is it? The Tea Party was certainly an unusual plant--but now it's just a bloodsucking menace. It needs to get blowed up.