It’s not about a Tea-Party Victory, but the death of the socialist left:

Most pundits are crediting this U-turn to the political muscle of the Tea Party and it’s true that President Obama would never have agreed to this deal if the Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives hadn’t engaged in the brinkmanship of the past few weeks. But to focus on the Tea Party is to ignore the tectonic political shift that’s taken place, not just in America but across Europe. The majority of citizens in nearly all the world’s most developed countries simply aren’t prepared to tolerate the degree of borrowing required to sustain generous welfare programmes any longer.

Let’s hope, though socialism is driven by innate human traits, primarily laziness and envy (and to be fair, misplaced compassion), so it will always rear its ugly head as long as we remain human.

[Update a while later]

Was this Obama’s “read my lips” moment?

And so we have the best of both worlds politically: a deal that leaves the Tea Party unsatisfied and therefore fired up for the next battles and election cycle, and a demoralized liberal base that can’t come to grips with the fact that socialism is over because we’ve run out of other people’s money…

Is it almost the end of the beginning?