Back to Obambi - The OBL honeymoon is now over.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/opinion/sunday/dowd-tempest-in-a-tea-party.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Tempest in a Tea Party
By MAUREEN DOWD

SO I was chatting with Chris Coons, the new Democratic senator from Delaware who had a rare win over the Tea Party when he beat loony Christine “I’ve Dabbled in Witchcraft but I Am Not a Witch” O’Donnell in the midterms.

Coons is a smart guy who’s alarmed at finding himself in a vicious combat zone that makes “Shark Week” look like a guppy party.

He said he felt as if he were in “an alternative universe.” He wonders if the president, rather than using an analogy about late credit card payments, should explain that failing to raise the debt ceiling is like the nation’s refusing to pay its mortgage. And he glumly noted that there would be a “bouquet of blame” for everyone if Congress and the White House allowed the country to “Titanic.”

“You know,” I told the suffering senator, “there is an easy solution.”

He looked up hopefully.

“Witchcraft,” I beamed. “Too bad we don’t have a senator who knows some spells.”

Ancient incantations and eye of newt — not that Newt — would be the only way to conjure up a less embarrassing group of leaders.

The world is watching in fearful — and sometimes gleeful — fascination as the Tea Party drives a Thunderbird off the cliff with the president and speaker of the House strapped in the back. The Dow is hiding under the bed with a glass of single malt. Can it get more excruciating? Apple has more cash than the U.S. government.

Amid the chilling anarchy, there’s not a single strong leader to be seen — not even a misguided one. All the leaders are followers. You have to wonder if President Obama at some level doesn’t want to lead. Maybe he just wants to be loved.

The citizens of this country tremble at the thought that these are the people governing them. Should we stick our money under our mattresses? It’s not only the economy that gets nourished by confidence; it’s also politics.

The maniacal Tea Party freshmen are trying to burn down the House they were elected to serve in. It turns out they wanted to come inside to get a blueprint of the historic building to sabotage it.

Like gargoyles on the Capitol, the adamantine nihilists are determined to blow up the country’s prestige, their party and even their own re-election chances if that’s what it takes. (Many are worried about primary races with even more dogmatic challengers, which is a truly scary thought.) If they can drag President Obama off his pedestal, even better. They think he looks down on them and sneers at their values.

Democratic lawmakers worry that the Tea Party freshmen have already “neutered” the president, as one told me. They fret that Obama is an inept negotiator. They worry that he should have been out in the country selling a concrete plan, rather than once more kowtowing to Republicans and, as with the stimulus plan, health care and Libya, leading from behind.

As one Democratic senator complained: “The president veers between talking like a peevish professor and a scolding parent.” (Not to mention a jilted lover.) Another moaned: “We are watching him turn into Jimmy Carter right before our eyes.”

Obama’s “We must lift ourselves to a higher place” trope doesn’t work on this rough crowd. If somebody at dinner is about to kill you, you don’t worry about his table manners.

More and more, 2008 looks like the tulip mania.

When Obama came before the cameras Friday to say that “any solution to avoid default must be bipartisan,” many Democrats wish he had just gone all unilateral and taken Bill Clinton’s advice to invoke the 14th Amendment. They yearned to see the president beat the political suicide bombers over the head with the Constitution. Impeaching a constitutional lawyer for saving the economy would be an even more difficult sell than impeaching a rogue for fibbing about a dalliance.

The Gingrich revolution pulled Republicans to the right of the Reagan revolution and the Tea Party revolution pulled Republicans to the right of the Gingrich revolution. The difference, though, is existentially striking: The Reagan and Gingrich forces wanted a leaner government, but they still believed in government.

The sighing, spectral Harry Reid does not look up to the task of taking on the freshman wolfen.

The laconic president emerges from the sidelines periodically to warn about economic default, but we’re already in political default.

Consider what the towel-snapping Tea Party crazies have already accomplished. They’ve changed the entire discussion. They’ve neutralized the White House. They’ve whipped their leadership into submission. They’ve taken taxes and revenues off the table. They’ve withered the stock and bond markets. They’ve made journalists speak to them as though they’re John Calhoun and Alexander Hamilton.

Obama and John Boehner have been completely outplayed by the “hobbits,” as The Wall Street Journal and John McCain called them.

What if this is all a cruel joke on us? What if the people who hate government are good at it and the people who love government are bad at it?

The sad thing is that this is true; Obama is turning into Carter.

For all his oratory and spectacular messaging during the campaign, Obama essentially conceded the debt ceiling debate right at the beginning. I think the focus that he and his people had on opinion polls was to blame. Until a few weeks ago, a majority of Americans didn't want the ceiling to be raised, and the Tea Party made a big deal of that, and many not-that-stupid GOP legislators joined their trenches based on the assumption that those polling numbers would stick. Obama's folks gave too much importance to those polls and conceded a one-to-one link between debt ceiling increase and deficit reduction. The Obama team interpreted other recent polls showing independents moving away from him as proof that he needs to move to the right. Meanwhile, as the drama intensified the polling reversed, and a majority of people did want to raise the ceiling.

When the conservative-minded Economist says the conservatives are wrong on an issue, it means that the conservatives are dead wrong. This is one of those issues. And Obama went and did what the conservatives wanted. The Obama team had a spectacular failure on messaging throughout this debate, from the beginning to the bitter end.

He may stil win the second term but the entire federal workforce is angry with him. If he touches the federal salaries or benefits once more he will be gone. Methinks he will indeed touch them albeit after getting elected, if at all.

The Absolute Zero wrote:He may stil win the second term but the entire federal workforce is angry with him. If he touches the federal salaries or benefits once more he will be gone. Methinks he will indeed touch them albeit after getting elected, if at all.

He will have no option but to find cuts there, if there is to be a deal come Thanksgiving. I didn't realize the federal bureaucracy had that much power in elections.