Is there grape Kool-Aid in your Tea Party?

Oh my God, they’ve shut down the government of the United States and some pompous blathermouth named Ted Cruz wants to be president of whatever’s left over.

I watched clips of the freshman Tea Party senator’s oratory masterpiece last week and couldn’t help but feel empathy for the long-winded man with the pained countenance. He reminded me of the sad clown who’d rather be cavorting with the lions and tigers in the center ring, but is stuck on the sidelines riding a tiny tricycle, throwing lollies to the tots instead.

I wonder if he’ll cheer up, poor fellow, now that he’s a household name?

On the down side, even the nice people at Fox News were pointing out that Sen. Cruz’s 21-hour soliloquy, unlike Texas Representative Wendy Davis’ profile-raising filibuster, didn’t serve any actual purpose. Due to arcane Senate rules, the budget vote was going to take place as-is when it took place, and Sen. Cruz would be required to yield the floor at that time anyhow.

It was either a flagrantly masturbatory display in which case the man needs our help, now; or he wants to be president.

Maybe I’m being too hard on him. Maybe it’s both.

But his... performance is just the latest example of the phenomenon I sat down to write about. Which is, much like witnessing the death of print in my lifetime, I never thought I’d live long enough to see America become a three-political-party country, but I believe it now.

I’m sure smarter people than I have written all about it, but Sen. Cruz’s self-congratulatory yakkathon put the differences between the Tea Party’s goals and the old-school GOP infrastructure in stark, irreconcilable relief.

The mainstream GOP wants to keep the lights on and the engines running as penuriously as possible, whereas the Tea Partiers believe the system the old-school legislators are trying to preserve is the dragon they came to DC to slay.

And cue the wackiness.

Despite educated busybodies from every hue of the political spectrum begging them to avert fiscal crisis and go about the job description they were elected to execute, the new Tea Party congressmen and women appear only vaguely curious to see what happens when the government they were hired to represent begins to fail to pay its bills.

My guess is, like most of the anti-government agitators I’ve met, the Tea Party legislators expect to continue suckling at the government’s teat even as they push it into the chute for a bolt to its brain, without giving much thought to what comes after.

[In the interest of equal time—and since I live in Idaho now—I must admit the Tea Partiers still compare favorably to their wan counterparts on the Left. The Occupiers and the Naderistas, because of their outdated appeal to the intelligence and/or heart of Americans at a point in history when we are a gut-based society, failed to coalesce the Left. They enjoyed their 15 minutes then slunk away, wiggling their fingers downward, tails between their legs. Visions of James Taylor records dancing in their heads.]

The Tea Party, however, came to play. And they brought some game. It’s some transparently short-sighted and counter-productive game, but credit where it’s due, they put fannies in seats of power in the nation’s capitol.

And now, these same insurrectionists who have pledged to eliminate the government are sitting at the head of many of the committees that oversee and fund that government.

Here is why various people in media, finance, as well as many of their fellow Republican legislators have recently referred to Tea Party representatives who keep attaching deal-breaking health care-killing amendments to the budget as hostage-takers or terrorists:

The Tea Partiers in the House were elected by their carefully gerrymandered districts back home specifically because they promised to go to DC and gunk up the works. They promised to bring Washington to its knees and as of today, it looks like they officially have. Embarking with the same stated goal as al Qaeda, the Tea Party has succeeded where Osama bin Laden failed.

I don’t see this as a ‘win’ for anybody except America’s enemies and debt-holders.

And the Democratic nominee in 2016.

With the The Tea Party caucus demolishing the hegemony of the old guard GOP, other than 40+ impotent votes to repeal Obamacare, Speaker Boehner can’t get a damned thing done. Despite arguments that the two political parties are cut from the same cloth—which in the macro is certainly true—there’s no mistaking Tea Party legislators for colluders... or for legislators, really. They came not to praise Washington, but to bury it and so far they’re right on schedule.

Assuming there is still a government to run by 2016, the Tea Party wing will be so emboldened by this manufactured crisis—and all the other ones they’re threatening to brew up between now and then—the GOP will either be in the throes of a brutal internecine bloodletting, or have split off into two entirely different political entities by then. Neither of which will have enough votes by themselves to win a national election, thus ceding the White House to the Democrats like Ross Perot’s candidacy did for Bill Clinton in 1992.

Can’t you just imagine nationally-televised three-way presidential debates between a frisky Democratic candidate, some mainstream GOP octagenarian and a stars-in-his-eyes Ted Cruz or Rand Paul?

They might as well just hand Hillary the cape and mitre now.