Karl Denninger notes that it took all of six hours for Republicans to abandon their self-proclaimed and much-ballyhooed goals:
The very so-called “Tea Party” and “Conservative” members of Congress could not even agree to cite a specific clause in The Constitution that enabled legislation to be brought to the floor.
Oh, it gets better. The actual proposed rule would not have prevented passing something that nobody could manage to find a clause in The Constitution that enabled the bill. It in fact only required that a point of order be raised if the language was not present, allowing a gigantic and overwhelming 20 minutes of debate (10 each side) before a simple majority could vote to table the objection and move forward anyway – Constitution be damned.
The Committee rejected that watered-down milquetoast rule!
That would be enough to call the Tea Party and so-called “Conservatives” we sent to Washington a failure on the day they took their oaths of office all by itself.
But no, that wasn’t enough for them. They had to make damn sure that I could get out the megaphone and holler from the rafters that every single thing we were sold by these clowns during the campaign – the entire Palin thing, the entire “we’re gonna take back Washington!” screed was an out-and-out fraud from the very first breath that passed their lips.
Remember, the claim by the Republicans (including but not limited to The Tea Party) was that they would cut the budget by $100 billion? Which, I might remind you, would have been less than five percent of the deficit this year. Well, it turns out that was a lie too.
I think it’s a little too soon to condemn the Tea Party for these failures, however. They are a mere subset of the Republican legislators and there aren’t enough of them to force these sorts of things through over the objections of their fellow Republicans. But, it certainly does underline the complete lack of commitment to either the Constitution or reducing government spending on the part of the newly elected Republicans.
And unfortunately, it looks like Rand Paul has already sold out too. He’s willing to raise the debt ceiling… just this one time. Again. How quickly they grow once they get into office.