<sigh>:
The war of words inside the GOP over a proposed budget compromise escalated Thursday, with tea party conservatives targeting House Speaker John Boehner and other Republicans who support the deal and "don't have the stomach" to cut spending.In terms of principle, they're right. <shrug>
Heritage Action's Dan Holler said on Thursday that Republicans who support the budget plan unveiled Tuesday night "will have to explain to their constituents" their broken promises on taxes and spending.
And Club for Growth's Chris Chocola said "it should surprise no one" when GOP members who vote for the plan are challenged in future primaries.
Thus wasting TP resources far better spent on supporting Republican incumbents and challengers against the Democrats in a cycle in which ObamaCare has made possible the biggest "red" tsunami yet. But no, Count Chocola, let's forget all of that, let's forget resurrecting the Republic, and by all means concentrate on annihilating one another. Gotta keep our priorities straight, after all.
At least this time, TPers didn't start the pissing contest:
The salvos from the right came after Boehner, for the second day, blasted conservative groups for criticizing the budget deal "before they even saw it."
Boehner said Thursday that tea party groups were "misleading their followers."
A day earlier, the speaker said the groups were "using our members and they're using the American people for their own goals."
The Speaker overreacted and kneecapped himself with his overheated rhetoric. Which is a shame, since his underlying argument isn't entirely off-target. It is fair to say that Tea Party groups are exaggerating the magnitude of the Sequester compromise, whether for fundraising purposes and/or a general insatiable appetite for fratricide. The latter has long since been abundantly demonstrated; far too many TPers are far more eager to carpet-bomb their own party than take the "fight" to the Donk enemy. Their purity fetish, it would seem, is dismayingly stronger than ever.
Which raises the twin questions to GOP leaders of why the Cruz they would want to rekindle that destructive conflagration by yielding any ground on the Sequester when they didn't have to, and what they'd have had to fear from a Democrat-forced shutdown showdown for the sake of another profoundly unpopular taxing/spending binge when they're already reeling from the ObamaCare cataclysm.
How about we stand down and look at reality, guys & gals? To the House GOP leadership: You f'd up by yielding a little spending ground you shouldn't have and reestablishing a godawful precedent in the process. To Tea Partiers: Boehner isn't the Devil Incarnate; just an orange man and solid conservative who's grown sick to death of getting kidney-punched from behind while trying to hold the line against the enemy in front of him. To both: There's the 2014 midterms, and vast numbers of gainable seats to be had - by working together.
Or we can destroy ourselves and the Republic will remain in the grave.
Seems like an easy choice to me.
But who am I to spoil a good family blood feud? Just don't get any of it on me.
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