Tea Party Would Defeat Obama by Supporting McConnell Plan on Debt
George Will writes for the Washington Post.
The Tea Party, the most welcome political development since the Goldwater insurgency in 1964, lacks only the patience necessary when America lacks the consensus required to propel fundamental change through our constitutional system of checks and balances. If Washington’s trajectory could be turned as quickly as Tea Partyers wish — while conservatives control only one-half of one of the two political branches — their movement would not be as necessary as it is. Fortunately, not much patience is required.
The Goldwater impulse took 16 years to reach fruition in the election of Ronald Reagan. The Tea Party can succeed in 16 months by helping elect a president who will not veto necessary reforms. To achieve that, however, Tea Partyers must not help the incumbent achieve his objectives in the debt-ceiling dispute....
Richard Miniter, a Forbes columnist, is right: “Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev.” Beneath the tattered, fading banner of reactionary liberalism, Obama struggles to sustain a doomed system. Democrats’ dependency agenda — swelling the ranks of government employees, multiplying government-subsidized industries, enveloping ever-more individuals in the entitlement culture — is buckling under an intractable contradiction: It is incompatible with economic growth sufficient to create enough wealth to feed the multiplying tax eaters.
Events are validating the Tea Partyers’ arguments. Time is on their side — but not on America’s, unless the impediment to reform is removed in 16 months....