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.
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…
Conference is over, and Patricia and I are driving down the coast highway. We’ll be stopping in Cambria tonight, and then back to LA tomorrow. I might keep an eye on things with my phone, but I won’t be posting much, if at all. Be good in comments.
I agree with Paul Spudis that he was one of the few people in the Bush administration who really understood the purpose of the Vision for Space Exploration, and was able to articulate it. Unfortunately, he either didn’t recognize how much Mike Griffin was perverting that vision, or didn’t have sufficient clout to do anything about it.
Chris Matthews’ infatuation with John McCain has returned. The day after the Republican senator bashed his own party, knocking “Hobbit” Tea Partiers, the Hardball anchor on Thursday lauded him as “great” and even suggested McCain as a MSNBC guest host: “…He can substitute for me some night with that kind of talk!”
Don’t expect him to actually vote for him, though.
