I wanted to take a moment to wish our many Legal Insurrection friends a HAPPY FESTIVUS! For those of you wondering what Festivus is about, click HERE for details.
There are four key components of Festivus:
Needless to say, dinner and displays of physical strength are difficult to do in an internet format. But I thought today might be a good forum for airing Tea Party Grievances. I want to send this message clearly to our political leader Washington DC:
“I’ve got a lot of problems with you people, and now you’re going to hear about it!”
My grievance today stems from a comment made by Ohio Congressman Steven LaTourette, a Republican who says Speaker of the House John Boehner is not to blame for the failure of the Plan B Fiscal Cliff strategy. Instead, LaTourette blames the Tea Party “chuckleheads” who have “screwed this place up.”
Mindful of the fact I am a Democrat, I will remind the Ohio Representative that neither President Obama or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have offered in indication they would approve of, compromise with, or work with any Republican-backed solution. Forty or fifty members of Congress who were elected by their citizens to enforce some sense of fiscal sanity, and are acting at the behest of those voters, are not the reason the Republicans in our nation’s capital are covered in shame today.
Boehner failed because no Democrat in power wants him to succeed. Furthermore, the American media is doing nothing to present the full story related to the complexities of our economic troubles. After all, the greater the drama, the better the ratings. Even better when the GOP is on the losing side of the saga!
Blaming the Tea Party backed members of Congress is inane, and does little to inspire these representatives to work with the elite-backed Republicans after the holiday break. And it gives these “rogue” members lots of incentive to change the Congressional GOP leadership after the New Year — and this may actually be the best Christmas present we Tea Party types can get!
Another San Diego activists, W.C. Varones, is a libertarian and expert on financial and economic matters. He recently took an in-depth look at the Plan B failure and offers not only an “airing of the grievances”, but the first prediction of 2013 as well:
The best outcome now would be to go over the fiscal cliff. That would bring baby steps toward fiscal responsibility. The Republicans could then use the debt ceiling as leverage to get entitlement reform. Icing on the cake would be the Republicans throwing [Boehner] out as speaker, which looks a lot more likely now that they’ve stood up to him once.The more likely outcome, unfortunately, is that the MSM wing of the Democratic Party blames Republicans and hounds them mercilessly. In early January, cowardly Republicans then surrender, just as they have at every opportunity in the past. They undo most of the modest tax increases and spending cuts, and let Obama keep running trillion-dollar deficits. They probably surrender on the debt ceiling too.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY