Joe Scarborough: Where are the adults in the Republican Party?So, the government was shut down over Obamacare and Obamacare is no longer the issue.Chuck Todd: When you say "adults," the Tea Party hears "elites."
What is the issue?
Well, they make noises about the deficit. Let's see, the deficit was down 35% between 2013 and 2012 at a time when the economy is still trying to recover which is not a time to be sucking down demand.
But let's say the deficit is the issue. You're going to solve it in two weeks? You're going to tie it to a six week continuing resolution rather than to a real budget, which you cannot pass because the Tea Party will not allow the appointment of a conference committee?
I'd like to make some pithy comment about what's going on here, but I don't have a clue. The adults in the Republican Party are cowed and the mainstream Democrats are hoarse. The left Democrats are more "WTF?"
Count me "WTF?"
The downside of this is a really black pit involving everything from domestic infrastructure to foreign affairs, and notice I did not even bring up the people who are literally facing hunger and the prospect of homelessness from this fiasco.
The upside, I cannot fathom.
The deficit is dropping like a stone and this is not the proper time to drop it by conventional, which I suppose is "elite," economic theory. The drop is directly responsible for our unemployment problem and therefore the slow tax revenues.
But, of course, I was educated at a university that the Tea Party governor of Texas Rick Perry (once and future POTUS candidate) scorns as "elite" and that he demands produce a $10,000 undergraduate degree that meets the immediate needs of the job market. Proving he does not understand the difference between a research university and a community college.
I never thought I'd grow up to be "elite." I'm the same guy for whom going to college was an impossible dream and all colleges were the same. And here I am defending deficit spending to produce jobs and elite education to make the unknown known.
I guess I've joined what former Sen. Rick Santorum called the "snobs," but joined in the sense I want kids like I was to have the opportunities I had without having to take the risks I took to get the GI Bill.
That's my social goal.
Now that Congress has voted to pay the involuntarily furloughed workers when this self-imposed wound is treated, the Tea Party has essentially shut down the revenue side of government but not the expenditure side. Deficits? WTF?
Can somebody explain to me the Tea Party's goal? Even short term?
