Early Defining Test for Tea Party and Associated Republicans

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...in a fight over earmarks.

McConnel says the money spent on earmarks, if saved by a ban, would have no impact on the deficits.

Huh? I thought you Republicans said every dollar counts?

Imagine the situation where the GOPers in the House mount a campaign to cut SS and Medicare / Medicaid but fail to clean up the earmarks mess because earmarks benefit them politically.

The fun's only just beginning. Mabe too is the GOP civil war.

LF

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Well, the sh*t is really going to hit the fan if the Tea Partiers actually hold fast to principle.

Here's one who says he'd have absolutely not problem at all initiating an investigation into torture by Bush / Cheney.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/r...-bush-torture/

Wow, I was really off the mark predicting that the Tea Party would fight first over the national debt ceiling.

The mid-terms of 2010 might turn out to be the worst things (in the GOP opinion) that ever happened to the GOP. They'll rue the day of November 7, 2010 when the Tea Partiers got elected, I'll bet.

LF

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At a recent Freedom Works 2-day conference none other than Dick Armey extoled TPers to remain ideologically pure and to, as necessary, ignore the main-stream GOP enticements of leadership roles and other trinkets of inculcation, but rather, to remain ideologically pure and true to purpose.

In specific, he wants them to remain true to their party platform's core believes in smaller government, less regulations, lower deficits and national debt and no earmarks. Hmmmm....

Must I be the first to point out that Dick Army was in the past the absolute high-priest of earmarks? Either he's have a conversion of the near-religious kind, or, he's angling for something for himself.

LF

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It looks like McConnell backed down on earmarks in response to Sen. DeMint's pledge to fight him on them. McConnell now supports the earmarks ban.

His position is very odd, though. He says earmarks do a lot of good and that he likes them but because of political pressure from the Tea Party he'll support a ban of them.

Wow, score one for the Tea Party. A win with hardly a shot fired.

This will likely embolden the Tea Party on a number of other issues where they could adopt GOP-style obstructionism agains their own party and get concessions. But the real test will come when it's time to vote on the debt ceiling...in January.

It's impossible to overstate how intrigued and even excited I am to see this development. Maybe, just maybe the right wing is awakening to the incredible damage the GOP has done to the middle class. The Tea Party may very well be the stalking horse that actual democracy used to demolish the old-guard, business-loving, middle class hating GOP. Hurrah!

The real loser in this is Rand Paul who went squishy on earmarks once elected. By default then DeMint has become the voice of the ideological branch of the Tea Party - GOP. Thank God.

LF

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the tea partiers had more gumption than I thought possible.

LF