Do You Believe in Magic?
My new column in the Week (misattributed a few minutes ago to my estimable Week editor, Ben Frumin, no relation) praises the Boehner plan for its artful use of smoke and mirrors.
Tea Party Republicans confront a party establishment unanimously representing the Boehner plan as a huge victory for the Tea Party, a crushing defeat for Obama, and an honest-to-God-for-real plan to shrink government starting now.
I cherish these sentences from an op-ed Wednesday by Bill Kristol:
"To vote against John Boehner on the House floor this week in the biggest showdown of the current Congress is to choose to vote with Nancy Pelosi. To vote against Boehner is to choose to support Barack Obama."
Yet the Tea Party can rightly reply: But wait a minute — the Obama White House is defending the Boehner plan!
The fact that the Republican leadership is not honest, however, does not mean that it is not right. The GOP has marched itself into a fatal confrontation — not only with the Obama administration — but with the whole global economy. It has threatened to force an unnecessary U.S. bankruptcy unless it gets its unpopular way.
Click here to read the entire column.
