If you, like me, have been having a kind of deja-vu-all-over-again creepy feeling watching the Republicans swagger all over Capitol Hill in the wake of the midterm elections, it’s justified, according to Daniel Larison, writing (critically, actually) in The American Conservative:
One of the stories some conservatives told themselves in 2010 was that the Tea Party movement had succeeded in getting the Republican Party “out from under Bush.” Fresh off of a significant electoral victory aided in part by the Tea Party movement, what has been the first and most pressing priority of the Republican leadership? To make sure that the deficit-expanding tax cuts they failed to pay for in the Bush years continue to increase the deficit in the future, and to make sure that they don’t pay for them now.
Larison goes on to elucidate the basic conundrum the GOP is getting itself into vis-a-vis the Tea Party — pander to that whack-job base to get the votes, then ignore the tea baggers’ concerns:
It is certainly true that the Tea Party movement opposes tax increases, but it is also supposed to be interested in bringing public debt under control. The leadership has made clear that it is quite happy to add significantly to the debt through tax cut extensions, payroll tax cuts, and continued spending. Bush-era habits of spend-and-borrow have resumed within weeks of the midterms that supposedly represented the repudiation of these habits. Will the new members of the House and Senate rebel against this rapid return to the old ways? If Tea Partiers and conservatives are at all serious about reducing the debt, they need to make sure that they do.
