The American Spectator

Republicans need to grow some cojones.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives just voted to approve the colossally awful cave-in of a debt ceiling deal. They accept the Obama-manufactured lie that the U.S. government is in imminent danger of defaulting on its financial obligations.

They don’t seem to care that voters sent an unmistakable signal in November 2010. Voters made it abundantly clear that they want the federal government to end the reckless spend-a-thon that began under Bush and intensified under Obama and the previous Democratic Congress.

Yet Republicans keep fumbling the ball. After all the hype, Speaker Boehner hasn’t actually cut any spending. He talks a good game but really he hasn’t even tried.

And the debt ceiling talks are a national embarrassment.

These politicians want to create a “Super Congress” that would resolve the debt ceiling issue. This newly proposed body, of questionable constitutionality, is an abomination. Americans elect lawmakers to Congress so they can make decisions about spending. They don’t elect them to punt by creating a bizarre new legislative creature.

Even Republicans’ offer to increase the debt limit, spending, and at least implicitly, taxes, makes no sense.

If President Obama and the Democrats who control the Senate want to increase spending and the Republicans who (overwhelmingly) control the House want to decrease spending, the logical compromise, at least at first glance, is to do neither.

The simplest solution, which doesn’t even seem to have been discussed, would be to freeze federal spending through the next election. This is far from ideal, of course, but then the two parties could slug it out in the 2012 election and let the voters decide which course to take.

But House Republicans, under the so-called leadership of Speaker Boehner, don’t seem to actually want to reduce government spending.

Are they, deep down, committed to limiting government, but gun-shy after Republicans were (unfairly) blamed for the government shutdown in 1995? Or do they just not care?

That’s what it boils down to.

The American people are angry and restless right now. They want the country to start moving in the right direction. They’re pissed off that Congress isn’t listening to them and rightly so. Come election time, they will be out for blood, and I have a terrible feeling it won’t be the Democrats who get punished. The Democrats have a loyal base of parasites, low information voters, and entitlemaniacs who will vote for them no matter what.

It’s not the same with the Republicans. Right now the Republican coalition is much more fragile. Republicans cannot take Tea Party support for granted next year.

If Republicans keep doing what they’re doing, the Grand Old Party will cease to exist and Republicans will only have themselves to blame.