Over the past few weeks we have all watched as Washington ground to a halt in the debt ceiling debate only managing to squeeze out a deal at the last possible moment. Many of us agree that the majority of the trouble stems from the TEA party's all or nothing, "we will not compromise" approach to the debate.
Some political analysts have attributed this to a lack of political experience on the part of the TEA party backed republicans, they simply didn't realize that compromise is how things get done. It seems to me that you could ask any fifth grader and they could tell you that compromise is an essential component of government in America. If we are to believe the analyst explanation for their actions then it seems that politically incompetent would be the proper term.
On the other hand it is no secret that the TEA party republicans have no plans of being re-elected, in other words, political suicide has no deterrent effect allowing them to be as disruptive as they please without fear of voter backlash.
According to the New York Times Representative Tom Reed, a freshman Republican from upstate New York said:
“Re-election is the farthest thing from my mind, like many of my colleagues in the freshman class, I came down here to get our fiscal house in order and take care of the threat to national security that we see in the federal debt. We came here not to have long careers. We came here to do something. We don’t care about re-election.”
This fact alone strikes me as unusual, how often do we see someone run for an elected office but yet have no interest in a political future? This combined with the timing of their run for office could lead one to ask if this is an intentional effort to disrupt the government in America at a time when we are all beginning to think about the 2012 elections.
Most Americans would agree with the idea of getting the debt under control and certainly we need to be able to defend our country. We would also most likely agree that we need elected officials that can get something done as opposed to bringing Washington to a halt.
The tea party representatives have made it clear that they are willing to put their agenda ahead of the best interest of the American people openly stating that they had no objections to pushing America into default rather than compromise, a move that was clearly in no ones best interest.
The Times Of India said it best when they said:
"Never before in history has a group of extremist politicians succeeded in taking the good faith and credit of their own country hostage in order to assert their will."
At the end of the day the republicans kept their promise not to raise taxes. Unfortunately, they made no such promises regarding America's credit rating, your 401k or interest rates.
