Fragging: “To intentionally kill or wound (one's superior officer, etc.), esp. with a hand grenade.”
Take names. Remember them. The behavior of certain repugicans who call themselves tea party conservatives makes them the most destructive posse of misguided ‘patriots' we've seen in recent memory.
If the nation defaults on its financial obligations, the blame belongs to the tea party repugicans who fragged their own leader, John Boehner. They had victory in their hands and couldn't bring themselves to support his debt-ceiling plan - No new taxes, significant spending cuts, a temporary debt-ceiling solution with the possibility of more spending cuts down the line as well as their beloved constitutional balanced-budget amendment.
These people wouldn't recognize a hot fudge sundae if the cherry started talking to them.
The tick-tock of the debt ceiling debate is too long for this space, but the bottom line is that the tea party got too full of itself with help from certain characters whose names you'll want to remember when things go south. They include, among others, media personalities who need no further recognition; a handful of media-created “leaders,” including tea party faux-nation founder Judson Phillips and tea party anti-patriots co-founders Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler (both Phillips and Martin declared bankruptcy, yet they're advising tea party repugicans on debt?); a handful of outside groups who love to hurl ad hominems such as “elite” and “inside the Beltway” when talking about people like Boehner when they are, in fact, the elite (FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, Club for Growth, National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Prosperity); and elected leaders such as Minnesota's Bat-Shit Crazy Michele Bachmann, Ohio's Jim Jordan, head of the repugican study committee (a misnomer if there ever was one), and South Carolina's own insane pervert Jim DeMint, who grandstand and make political assertions and promises that are sheer fantasy.
Meanwhile, freshman congressmen have been targeted and pressured by some of the aforementioned groups to vote against Boehner's plan. South Carolina's contingent was so troubled, they repaired to the chapel Thursday to pray and emerged promising to vote no. Why? Not because jesus told them to, but because they're scared to death that DeMint will “primary” them — find someone in their own party to challenge them.
Where did they get an idea like that? Look no further than that lunatic, Sarah Palin's Facebook page, where she warned freshman about contested primaries and urged them to “remember us ‘little people' who believed in them, donated to their campaigns, spent hours tirelessly volunteering for them, and trusted them with our votes.” Her close: “P.S. Everyone I talk to still believes in contested primaries.” While they're at it, they also should remember that Palin came to the tea party long after the invitations went out. The lunatic knows where to hitch a wagon.
Unfortunately for the country, which is poised to lose its place as the world's most-trusted treasury and suffer economic repercussions we can ill afford, the stakes in this political game are too high to be in the hands of tea partyers who mistakenly think they have a mandate. Their sweep in the 2010 election was the exclusive result of anti-Obama sentiment and the sense that the president, in creating a health care plan instead of focusing on jobs, had overplayed his hand. Invariably, as political pendulums swing, the victors become the very thing they sought to defeat.
Who's overplaying their hand now?
It must be said that the tea party wingnuts are complete idiots with leaders who disastrously signed on to the so-called “Cut, Cap and Balance” pledge. What is it with repugicans and their silly pledges? Didn't get enough Scouting? This pledge now has them hog-tied to a promise they can't keep — the constitutional balanced-budget amendment. As many as a third desperately want a pardon from that commitment, according to sources close to the action.
Hubris is no one's friend and irony is a nag. The tea partyers who wanted to oust Barack Obama have greatly enhanced his chances for re-election by undermining their own leader and damaging the country in the process. The debt ceiling may have been raised and the crisis averted by the time this column appears, but that event should not erase the memory of what transpired. The tea party was a perversion that did nothing to change the conversation in Washington, in fact it caused the cessation of any conversation.
It has steeped far too long and was toxic to begin with.
It's time to toss it out.
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