Just when it looked as if disaster had been averted, Speaker John Boehner delayed the vote on his bill to end the debt ceiling crisis. Jennifer Rubin has the inside story:
A House aide just e-mailed me: “Buckets of crazy.” That’s as good an explanation as any as to why Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) won’t be able to hold a vote tonight on his debt-ceiling bill. The burn-the-building-down set is weakening, but the speaker is still short on votes.
“Burn-the-building-down set” is such a perfect description of the GOP members who would rather make a statement (about themselves and their own moral purity?) than do what is right. The tea party (gee, I remember when I considered myself a tea party sympathizer-but that was like around Wednesday) may well provide a primary opponent for those who support the Boehner bill. But so what? I thought these Young Turks didn’t care about things like that. Turns out that what they don’t care about is the future of the republic and handing a victory to President Obama.
Rubin thinks that the bill will ultimately pass:
The smart money is still on the eventual passage of the Boehner bill. But it’s not going to happen without extracting every last drop of patience from the American people, not to mention the media covering one of the most agonizing votes in recent memory.
Look, even the tea party should know that they weren’t sent to Washington as some kind of therapy to make them feel good about their moral superiority. Their antics are beginning to remind me of the old SDS–except that, believe you me, if SDS had gotten this close to accomplishing their ends, they would have been more pragmatic.