In the days following the budget deal negotiated in the House, the usual Beltway lap dogs have been hailing
Rep. Paul "Lyin'" Ryan as the man who stood up to the Tea Party.
One such tongue bath appeared in today's
once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle, authored by Republican-wired Chris Cillizza, who is under the delusion that Idea Man Ryan is heir to Idea Man Newt Gingrich -- LOL -- though we would offer that Ryan is more the heir of Gingrich in the sense that both are "what a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like" (credit: Paul Krugman). But no sooner had Ryan established his creds as the man who stood up to the Tea Party than he promptly sat down to the Tea Party:
We as a caucus -- along with our Senate counterparts -- are going to
meet and discuss what it is we're going to want out of the debt limit.
We don't want nothing out of this debt limit. We're going to decide what
it is we're going to accomplish out of this debt limit fight...We're
going to meet in our retreats after the holidays and discuss exactly
what it is we're going to try to get for this. [our emphasis]
To which the great Charles P. Pierce
responds:
It is helpful to remember that "getting something" out of allowing the
government to pay its bills is not the way the Congress operated until
Republicans like Paul Ryan got a hold of the House Of Representatives
and turned it into a shakedown palace. The only thing to be "gotten" out
of raising the debt ceiling was the fact that the world economy was not
allowed to crash. This is our government and our bills to pay and our
economy if it bellies up so, therefore, it is our debt limit. It is not
the property of the Republican House, or of Paul Ryan, Serious Man Of
Ideas, to turn into a ransom note every year. They might has well just
barricade the House side of the Capitol and string C-4 in the halls.
So, the hostage-takers are coming at us again, led by the Idea Man, whose big idea is apparently to threaten to default on U.S. Government obligations in order to accomplish... what?
We all [Ryan and the Tea Party] believe the same thing with respect to our ultimate goal.
With the budget I passed in March, that's what I really want. Balance
the budget, pay off the debt, don't raise taxes.
Translation: The rich get to keep their tax cuts, the poor and middle class get to keep their social safety net cuts. See?! Everyone has their cuts to bear!
