Surrendering to Statism: The Boehner Plan

7/28/2011
J.D. Thorpe

With the spontaneous rise of the Tea Party in 2009, the recently dead conservative movement was resuscitated back to life and given another chance to fight for limited government. In primary after primary, constitutionally-minded candidates toppled the establishment’s picks by running on the conservative principles that many in Washington had long since abandoned.

And in the midterm elections, this new wave of liberty defenders crushed the liberal statists at the polls – gaining 63 seats in the House and 6 seats in the Senate.

But the euphoria among the grassroots warriors was short-lived. In their first opportunity to validate their newly rediscovered tenet of fiscal responsibility, many weak-willed members of the GOP turned their back on the Tea Party and submitted to the Washington logic of perpetually massive spending and deficits.

They failed to follow the footsteps of the great conservative champions like Barry Goldwater and Robert Taft – men who were willing to fight on principle to the bitter end. Instead, they capitulated to business-as-usual model in our nation’s capital. The result was that disillusioned Tea Partiers saw $100 billion in promised cuts for FY 2011 get pro-rated to $61 Billion, and then dwindle further to $36 billion after more negotiations.

When the accounting gimmicks and budgetary tricks were sorted through, the final spending cut in the CR equated to a little more than one day in deficit spending.

Many conservative were outraged but still held out hope that the GOP could score a major victory in the debt ceiling negotiations.

Unfortunately, the latest showdown looks like a repeat of the Spring debacle.

After pursuing the substantive “Cut, Cap, and Balanceâ€