A PYRRHIC DEFEAT
More importantly, we've been had. It's difficult to wrap my head around it being intentional, but actions speak louder than words, and in this new Debt Deal passage, votes won out over future financial disaster. They just don't have the backbone to take the steps we need to take to get to where we want to be. Oh my.
In fact, the Republicans messed up so badly, it's not even a Pyrrhic victory, but a Pyrrhic defeat, as Thomas Sowell writes:
In short, the Republicans have now been maneuvered into being held responsible for the spending orgy that Democrats alone had the votes to create. Republicans have been had — and so has the country. The recent, short-lived budget deal turns out to be not even a Pyrrhic victory for the Republicans. It has the earmarks of a Pyrrhic defeat.This summer, Americans have the opportunity once again to let their feelings be heard. Our federal employees are on a long summer break, holding town halls across the nation. Remind them of how we were scared in to believing the debt ceiling had to be raised in order to protect our credit rating, and how millions of us cried out "no more debt", "live within our means".
The Fear Factor has been used too many times in the past few years, when our gut instincts told us no, but the politicians "who know better" said yes: TARP, the Stimulus Bill, ObamaCare, the Financial Reform Bill, and now the Boehner Bill (Thank you, Mr. Boehner, who gave the store away).
Every one of these monsters have proven to be more disastrous for America, and, in order to save face, the left is Dumping on the Tea Party, creating strawmen, and attacking American people who want to live by the Constitution. Hmmmmmmm, the lady doth protest too much, methinks. Let them call us terrorists (by the vice president of the United States), racists, hostage holders and all the other vile names that aren't worth mentioning here. Victor Davis Hanson writes, Spare Us the Sermons, Mr. President:
In an appeal to voters, Obama urged that they not act calmly, but get angry: “I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry!” The polarizing talk was the logical follow-up to his campaign hype of 2008, when he ridiculed the “clingers” of Pennsylvania, called on his supporters to confront his opponents and “get in their face,” and at one point even boasted, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” His jokes about Nancy Reagan and the Special Olympics were needlessly tasteless and crass.
Obama’s inflammatory language and tough metaphors are not all that unusual in the American political tradition. But what is odd is that a habitual participant in brass-knuckles political combat should call for the sort of civility that he himself did not and will not abide by.
Liberalism is a mental disorder, and rather than deal with the facts, the left name calls. We must be doing something right, because as the president has been "leading from behind", and the Democrats have not passed a budget in over 840 days, Republicans managed to pass the Ryan Budget and Cut, Cap & Balance. This would NOT have happened without the influence of the Tea Party movement.
So while leading with the hair-raising "Fundamental Transformation" comment, let's end with the Farewell Speech of President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office, January 11, 1989 (h/t Mark Levin) -- from a man who had to deal with double digit unemployment, double digit inflation, and double digit interest. He turned our country around. President Reagan ended the Cold War and set the American economy on course for the longest period of growth in modern history.
God bless this great country, and the men and women who fight to keep it free.
Illustration: Obamacare's Debt by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times
