The Republicans in the House of Representatives were able to gain the backing of three fourths of their membership on the Debt Ceiling legislation tonight, losing the remainder, who were the Tea Party radicals who held America hostage with their recklessness!
But despite this reality, ALL of the Republican Presidential candidates, with the one exception of former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, decided to join the Tea Party activists in statements of criticism of the legislation.
By doing so, all of these candidates have forfeited the right to be able to claim that they are responsible and legitimate candidates for the White House. They abandoned Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and it demonstrates that there will be tensions between those running for President, and the vast majority of the members of their party in Congress.
All of these candidates should be ashamed of their stand, particularly Mitt Romney, who is supposedly the front runner, but yet never intervened or spoke up during the weeks of controversy, and then, when he finally did over this past weekend, demonstrateed why he should not be elected President of the United States, as he fails to understand the importance of NOT siding with radical economic terrorists, the Tea Party Movement!
At the same time, it raises the image of Jon Huntsman, who is now easily seen as the best candidate that responsible, mainstream Republicans should support. But that does mean that the GOP will have the common sense to nominate a man who could really be a threat to the reelection of President Obama!
The one really gutsy thing I saw out of the dems in this whole fiasco was when the president said “I can’t gauruntee social security checks will go out if we dont reach a deal.” That was good. Everything else… cave… cave… waffle… delay…. ok lets give the republicans a little more, then they’ll be nice to us…. oh that didnt work, lets give in more. This whole thing was just too sad for words. What a disgrace.
Then again… the committee is due to report back in november 2012… and polls show most people didnt agree with the tea party on this… it was something like a 65-35 split. If this discussion were taking place during an election year the republicans would have gotten crushed at the polls…. so maybe the president has set this up so that he’ll have the advantage then? If that’s true (?) it would ammount to, in essence, the tea party giving the white house to the democrats in 2012 in exchange for victory on the debt ceiling debate. Not sure how I feel about that… but atleast it wouldnt be a total defeat for the democrats.
I think theres a real possibility that the left could radicalize and start to push back with the same kinds of tactics the tea party used during this crisis. Then we really will have a dysfunctional government. We will be, as the chinese say, living in interesting times…
Daniel, I think what you imagine is very likely to happen, and the Tea Party Movement will, without wishing to do so, help reelect President Obama!
seems like that would be the kind of smoke-filled-backroom-bargaining people are always complaining about. I’m not sure I’m reading the situaiton right, just speculation…. but it definitely seems possible. Boehner to Pres. Obama —-> give me what you want now and we’ll have this fight again in november 2012. The pres. believes he can win that fight so he would accept. And he probably would. I really wish the democrats had shown a little backbone in this fight. They basically accepted terms dictated at the point of a gun. No good.
It is time we all recognise that Obama is a tea party president. His words mean absolutly nothing except to get progressives to support him. My proof? His stimulus only supported the banks and wall street. His health care? He threw single payer and public option under the bus before there were even any serious talks on the matter, and then the only out come is to support the wealthy insurance companys. Forcing the middle class and businesses to pay them. He failed to close guantamino bay. He extended the Bush tax cuts again and again. Mitch Mconnell refused to meet with Harry Reid and would only meet with the Tea Party president and the 2 of them hammered out this Tea Party bill and then Obama handed this “satin sandwich” to Reid, Pelosi and said vote for it. And holding the gun to Reid and Pelosi he said that he would not excercise the 14th ammendment, therfore we will go into defaut if you don’t. cmon wake up. We have put all our efforts in supporting this trojan horse, and now we are all so very very screwed.