Trying to read the Tea leaves

Setting aside all the “birther” nonsense and the other extremes of the Tea Party—they just burn up all the oxygen in the room making it impossible for thoughtful discourse to proceed—it’s not that none of the points they make are without merit.

Philosophically, I think most people would agree that government, like private citizens, oughtn’t to spend more than they make. Can you imagine if every Tom, Dick and Harry in America could “raise his debt ceiling” whenever he reached his credit card limit?

It wouldn’t even make plausible science fiction.

I’m watching ABC’s Sunday morning political chat show and they have four of the new Tea Party Congressional freshmen on, and my jaw damn near hit the ground when one of them just said he’d be willing to vote to raise the debt ceiling if he was guaranteed certain fiscal concessions “down the road.”

And it occurred to me that this was how this first wave of Tea Party legislators were going to be absorbed into the system; their credulity will be exploited.

Watching these until-recently dentists and (I swear) used car salesmen agitate for the non-repeal of Bush’s tax cuts for gazillionaires just underscored that credulity. Just one year in and they’ve already been brought to heel.

Because they did not come to Washington to prop up Big Business or save the government at all; they came to dismantle the system, not repair it. It was their stated purpose, and poor people and welfare cheats (among others) from sea to shining sea voted for them in droves. (I know some of these ne’e’r-do-wells myself, the ones who exist on the government teat yet vote against every social program, bond issue and progressive politician who comes along because they’re just simply not bright enough to put A together with B and come up food stamps. One of them recently drove from Tucson to Las Vegas and got lost for five hours. Five hours in this age of satellite oversaturation and GPS everything. Big-time Tea Partier.)

Except for a few clever young guys and gals, this crop of Tea Party legislators look like they’re going to be as gullible as the people who sent them to Washington. In that sense, they are the perfect representatives of their constituency.

If they go ahead and vote to raise the debt ceiling, they’re toast. Or as the leading GOP presidential contender would say, “They’re fired!” That’s not what their districts sent them to D.C. to do.

Whatever the solution to the budget pickle is, if one even exists, isn’t on the table yet. It’s not scaling back government to its barest bones then throwing them to the super-wealthy to chew on; and it can’t be running up our national debt in perpetuity. That’s one the Tea Partiers are right on. Eventually that bird will indeed come home to roost and it will not be pretty.

If anything is gong to rescue us, it’s going to be an unforeseen event. It’s sure not going to be the current political wrangling going on in D.C. There, you have the Republican party at war with itself—one half wanting to scale government back to almost nothing, and the other half who won’t be satisfied till it’s nothing nothing; and on the other hand, you have the feckless Democrats, who couldn’t find their cajones with both hands.

Still, the Dems and the old-school GOP lawmakers have a lot more in common with each other than the Republicans do with their Tea Party brethren. All the Old Dogs on either side of the aisle are committed to preserving the status quo in some way, shape or form, while the Tea Partiers just want to burn the place down.

Consequently, fabulous political theater occurs in Washington and precious little else. And after the battle of the budget, it looks like it’s Crafty Old Pros 1, Wide-Eyed Newbies 0.

We’ll see if the newcomers wise up when “down the road” stays forever just over the horizon. When the current batch of legislators is back pulling teeth and selling Buicks, we’ll see if their Tea Party replacements will hew more closely to the party line. I’m guessing they will.

And then, while we wait for the unforeseen event that will either unite or destroy us, we will learn if anarchy is indeed preferable to bureaucracy.