Today, no one is talking about tripling the national debt or passing a “second stimulus.” Congress is about to cut spending by about $2 trillion and put us on a trajectory to balance the budget within a decade. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid complained Saturday evening that Congress has raised the debt limit 74 times since 1962 without conditions. He is right. This is happening for the first time in history, thanks to the Tea Party.
Consider that less than a week ago, President Obama addressed the nation, demanding that Congress include higher taxes in any debt-limit deal. According to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, the proposed deal has no tax increases. The Tea Party took tax hikes off the table and held the line — another major victory.
The Tea Party is also winning the battle of ideas...
The Tea Party has accomplished what it set out to do: Stop the freight train of runaway spending and taxation by the federal government and slowly start to turn the behemoth around. And the fact that it has done so, quickly and successfully, pitted against a Democratic-held Senate, a hostile president, and an even more hostile press, is a testament to the power that principle can have, even in the cesspool that is Washington, DC.
And so it will be in Washington. Obama took what small victories he could out of this weekend of defeats, and will attempt to build on what he has left:
The agreement would raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit in two stages by as much as $2.4 trillion. It represents a victory for Obama, allowing him to avoid another grueling fight over the debt limit in the heat of the 2012 presidential campaign.
But he failed to secure other top priorities, including fresh measures to revive the flagging recovery and an end to tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. Obama said he would pursue those goals later this year, when, under the terms of the deal, a new congressional committee would begin searching for further ways to control the national debt.
“The ultimate solution to our deficit problem must be balanced,” Obama said Sunday. “That’s why the second part of this agreement is so important.”
So we have won a small victory, nothing more, and have decided to accept an informal "hudna"* from the Democrats, until the inevitable next battle arises. Maybe, being that we hold only one branch of government, this is the best we can do, and the temporary draw-down of forces will work to our advantage.
But we had best not let our guard down, not for a moment. Sauron could not rest until he had the One Ring; Obama cannot rest until he savages the American people with another round of devastating tax hikes. He has already declared his intent to fight for them once more, we on the Right and who consider themselves Tea Party patriots had best do little more than dry our powder and refill our canteens before we prepare to go back on the march once again...
*HUDNA - Arabic word often translated as "cease-fire.- Historically used as a tactic aimed at allowing the party declaring the hudna to regroup while tricking an enemy into lowering its guard. When the hudna expires, the party that declared it is stronger and the enemy weaker. The term comes from the story of the Muslim conquest of Mecca. Instead of a rapid victory, Muhammad made a ten-year treaty with the Kuraysh tribe. In 628 AD, after only two years of the ten-year treaty, Muhammad and his forces concluded that the Kuraysh were too weak to resist. The Muslims broke the treaty and took over all of Mecca without opposition.