Jim DeMint's Nation-Wrecking Fantasy
NRO has a report on the Republican members of Congress willing to force default in order to get a Senate vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment.
In the Senate, DeMint is also counting noses, hoping to stir an eleventh-hour movement. Conservative voters, he says, will lose faith in the party if it backs the “Gang” plan and does not fight for a balanced-budget amendment. “Frankly, I believe if we had 41 Republicans who were willing to go past August 2, these things would happen in a hurry,” he says. “I don’t know that we do, but that is the kind of approach we need, and the approach we should have had all along.”
DeMint, who is working closely with Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), sees hope for a last-minute standoff, even as many of his GOP colleagues flock to the “Gang,” which is led by Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), a respected fiscal hawk. So far, he can count two established Senate dealmakers, Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), as allies.
Graham, for instance, attended a closed-door confab with DeMint and conservative activists on Tuesday, urging the various groups to push Republicans to hold. He told the audience that if Republicans did not battle for a balanced-budget amendment in the summer heat, the chances for its passage would quickly wilt. Waiting until August 3, he argued, would give the GOP sufficient leverage.
My theory : this is all gamesmanship and positioning, 100% concerned with the internal politics of the Republican caucus and the conservative movement.
But let's take it seriously for a minute.
It's now August 3. The federal government has exhausted its cash. Either we are in a constitutional crisis (because President Obama has invoked the dubious theory that the Fourteenth Amendment nullifies the debt ceiling and continues to emit bonds without congressional permission) or we are in a financial crisis ( because bond sales have halted and the federal government is failing to pay its bills).
Now what?
Seriously - now what?
The Senate votes for a BBA that locks in place forever the policy preferences of Jim DeMint? And three-quarters of the states then ratify it? Does anybody believe that any of this will happen? Does even Jim DeMint believe it?
It's all fantasy, every bit of it - but the kind of fantasy that destroys great countries.