“The party of white people”: How the Tea Party took over the GOP, armed with all the wrong lessons f

[applegrove]

“The party of white people”: How the Tea Party took over the GOP, armed with all the wrong lessons from history

By David Sehat at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/23/the_party_of_white_people_how_the_tea_party_took_over_the_gop_armed_with_all_the_wrong_lessons_from_history/

"SNIP..............


Unfortunately for the Republican leadership, the Tea Party seemed barely interested in governance. Tea Partiers wanted, above all else, a confrontation with the president regardless of the wisdom of the conflict. And because the 2010 freshman class was so large, Speaker John Boehner did not have a functional majority to pass bills without Tea Party support. That dynamic made Republican attempts to convert the posture of rage into actual policy initiatives difficult if not impossible.

The problems began straightaway. By early spring, it became apparent that the U.S. debt ceiling would need to be raised, a regular occurrence since the spiraling debts under the George W. Bush administration, now exacerbated by the Great Recession and the Democrats’ stimulus package to combat it. Republican leaders decided that they would resist all increases to the debt ceiling until they received sufficient concessions that would, they hoped, force a fundamental change in course.

The tactic was not new. Fights over the debt ceiling had been occasional going back to the exploding deficits of the Reagan administration. But what was new was the unbending posture of the Tea Party. In the past, when the opposition party threatened not to raise it, there was no real risk that the ceiling would not be raised. Refusing to do so was simply a way of extracting concessions. Everyone understood that actually going through with the obstruction would put the U.S. government into default—not a live option.

But what the Tea Party–led Republicans demanded—a massive cut to spending that would increase over time, a balanced-budget amendment that would permanently limit spending in the future, and the promise that these aggressive cuts would somehow balance the budget rather than creating recession and larger budget deficits—was unprecedented. There was no way that Obama could give even half of what the Tea Party faction demanded. So what would otherwise have been a routine maneuver in public credit of the United States. The Tea Party threatened to burn down the house in order to “save” it.



..............SNIP"

[Number23]

1. "The Tea Party threatened to burn down the house in order to “save” it."

The calling card of an extremist. Everything possible should be done to keep people like this out of power.