Wednesday August 10. Tea Party Commits Political Suicide.

Wednesday August 10. Tea Party Commits Political Suicide.

August 8, 2011. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Reuters/Ipsos poll said Wednesday 73 percent of Americans believe the United States is "off on the wrong track," and just one in five, 21 percent, think the country is headed in the right direction. The Reuters/Ipsos poll said 49 percent of Americans held a negative view of Republicans after the deal was reached and 42 percent held a negative opinion of the conservative Tea Party movement. Tea Party conservatives stuck closely to their demand that deficit reduction be handled solely through spending cuts and were willing to risk a default to achieve their aims. By contrast, 40 percent of those polled saw Democrats in a negative light. "Coming out of this, the Republicans are I think taking the balance of the blame for the debt deal negotiations," Clark said. "The process was very damaging to Washington," said Clark. "Shift the focus on job creation," former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson told MSNBC.

Tea Party's fate is already sealed by Tom Courtney, January 17, 2011. The Tea Party’s power was as outsiders, but they sought power, were elected in large numbers. Now they are insiders, part of the government they attack. They can’t survive long in this position. They will be soiled or be perceived as such. It took Obama a couple years to assume the blame for Washington's problems. Likewise the same will happen to the Tea Party, but possibly even worse, because their extremism for reform is not predicated upon practicality. Ideological inflexibility will break them. Now elected, they will be forced with two impossible choices: either remain ideologically pure and extremist and be ineffective in passing their legislation or compromise with the majority powers in order to have any practical effect. Either way, they die. And because their rhetoric was so extreme, they are boxed-in: their proposals are impractical, but they must act or be branded as part of the problem. Furthermore, their name and symbol is false: they say the Obama legislation amounts to taxation without representation. Thus the Tea Party moniker. The problem with that is their hyperbole has resulted in making a difference in degree be seen as a difference in kind: to a degree, as a minority faction, their tax proposals were not enacted. But majority rule is no disenfranchisement. The minority power is still represented. This is not tyranny. It is the agree-upon and proper functioning of a democracy. They seem to be asserting that even though they are a minority, they wish to impose their will upon the duly-elected majority. And, by their logic, they will achieve their taxation with representation. But this, of course, places them in the position of practicing what they so vehemently oppose: the tyranny of the minority over the majority. If they weren't so fanatical, they could learn from and avoid the hard lessons of history: the higher you rise, the harder you fall. The clock is ticking. In two years we will be roundly back to sipping our cappuccinos and lattes, leaving the tea to the foreigners, and from whence the tradition originated and is practiced.

Pew came out with a new poll on Monday confirming what we all already knew: The American people think the last several weeks in Washington have been a disgrace. In fact, the words most often volunteered to the pollsters were "ridiculous," "disgusting," and "stupid." The response was negative from 75% of Republicans, 72% of Democrats and 72% of independents. More than twice as many people have a more negative view of President Obama (38%) because of the debate than a more positive view (18%). Three times as many people have a more negative view of Speaker John Boehner (34%) than a more positive view (11%). There were, in short, no winners in the last few weeks of debt debate. White House officials pointed to this fact in a briefing with reporters on Sunday night, when they explained why Republicans gave up their demand for another debt limit vote early next year. "The case against it made itself," an official said. "I think people said, 'Why on Earth would we want to go through this again?'"