Wait Just One Minute!

With the passage by the House of the Boehner Plan currently at great risk, far too many conservatives pundits are already playing right into the Democrats', along with their numerous friends in the elite media, hands.  It seems the "heavies" in this whole tawdry scramble to find some palatable way to raise the nation's debt ceiling and avoid the Apocalypse are the Tea Partiers after all, and especially the House members they helped elect.

Even the NRO's Mona Charen, normally rock solid, has gone wobbly, launching this invective against them:

The tea-party activists are excellent patriots, but during the debt-ceiling confrontation, some have displayed an obtuse and even vain rigidity.

Listen Mona, and all others similarly-minded as well, it's more than a bit obtuse of you to expect people who were elected precisely because they pledged not and never to compromise their principles, most especially when the heat was on, to do so now.

I'm willing to concede that Boehner and the House Republicans who agree to support his plan are all principled men and women.  In their estimation, the tactically correct move at this point is to pass this less than perfect bill and make the Democrats, for a change, react to it.  They may be right.

But they may be wrong.  American political history, the last 50 years or so anyway, is almost perfectly described by a long train of Democrat Party abuses.  That history has taught the Tea Partiers, as it should teach you as well, that making deals with Democrats is always dangerous, and often downright foolish.  Need I point out that when Reagan compromised with them in 1982 by raising taxes (just a bit), they never delivered on their promise to cut spending in return and Reagan regretted the deal the rest of his life?

No, the "heavies" in this story are, and must remain, President Obama and the Congressional Democrats.  Over the past two and one-half years, it is their incontinent spending and irresponsible management of the nation's fiscal policies, if one can call refusing to pass a budget at all  "management", that has lead us to this crisis.  Their stimulus-package-that-failed-to-stimulate has alone pushed the country almost one-trillion dollars closer to the current debt limit.

Meanwhile, Obama, Reid, and Pelosi somehow get to stand smuggly by, tapping their toes and drumming their fingers, insisting that it is the Republicans' responsibility to do something now.  This narrative must be challenged, again and again, as long as necessary.

You more "reasonable" conservative commentators are often reminding the Tea Partiers that because the GOP controls only one-half of one-third of the government, they must avoid the temptation to overreach, they must not assume they can actually govern from that very weak position.  But now you're effectively demanding that they do just that anyway, that it is somehow their fault if we reach Armageddon next Wednesday morning.

Look, everybody's tired, nervous, and maybe even a bit frightened just now.  This can lead to a feeling of helplessness which sometimes makes you look for relief by transferring your frustration with the other side onto someone else, perhaps even one of your very own.  You can't control the other side, but you can exert pressure on your ally. 

I would urge all you increasingly skittish scribblers to recognize this for what it is and then redirect your growing frustrations in this way:  Concede that men and women of good sense and good will can sometimes disagree.  Then point again your talented pens, always mightier than the sword, at the party most responsible for this mess.  Their name begins with a capital "D", by the way, not "T".