Today’s Daily Caller posted an article about some of the inaccuracies in a Sunday Washington Post article about the recent debt ceiling showdown. 

The article states that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and budget committee chairman Paul Ryan laid the foundation for this crisis years ago in order to improve the fortunes of the Republican party.  Good grief.  These people should be writing for Hollywood, they’d probably do a good job!

I think if you want to examine the debt ceiling debate you have to look at the Tea Party.  First of all, it is important to distinguish between the Tea Party Express and the Tea Party Patriots. The Tea Party Express is a Political Action Committee founded in California in 2009.  It is structured, organized, supports candidates, etc.  The Tea Party Patriots is a very loosely organized group that holds rallies, supports issues, and generally stands for small government.  The Tea Party Patriots had a lot to do with Republican victories in 2010, but they are not in any way connected to the Republican party–in fact, I suspect that many establishment Republicans wish they would go away.

One of the comments I heard during the debt ceiling debate was the consternation of a politician who complained that the new Tea Party congressional members were a problem because they couldn’t be bought!  Hallelujah!  He was referring to the fact that the kind of earmarks that had been thrown into Obamacare at the last minute to pass it simply did not work on the Tea Party Republicans.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and budget committee chairman Paul Ryan are fortunate enough to be men who are in the right place at the right time with the right idea.  I suspect that there are many establishment Republicans who wish that these men would go away, but the fact is that Cantor, McCarthy, and Ryan better represent the American people than the establishment Republicans. 

The Republican Party has a choice to make.  If they make the wrong choice, they are in danger of becoming a third party.  The establishment Republican Party will simply be replaced by the Tea Party.  What has happened is very simple.  As people get older and retire, they have more time to pay attention to what their government is doing.  When you are young, the major part of your energy is taken up with raising your family, working, etc.  Generally speaking, politics is not part of the picture.  When Obamacare was passed, a button was pushed in the minds of the country’s senior citizens.  They saw the cuts to Medicare and the death panels (even though the death panels are still being denied, they are there) and decided to take a stand.  Right now the Republican Party is benefiting from the energy of the Tea Party, but unless the establishment Republicans get serious about shrinking government, that may not continue.

Anyway, the debt ceiling showdown was a natural outcropping of Americans concerned about the size of government.  It would have been nice if the Republicans had planned the whole thing, but frankly, I am not sure they are that smart.