When members of the tea party class of 2011 first threatened debt default, they were outliers. Now, it’s standard operating procedure in the GOP to keep that long-unthinkable threat alive, even if Republicans may not be serious about letting it unfold. …Forgot to post this piece of today’s big lie. And it sure is big; nobody in the “tea party class” (note Woodward’s use of dividing people into classes; that bleeds through even though it’s worded like a school’s graduating class) ever threatened to default on the debt, but warned against the big-government socialists doing it by blowing it up to proportions that were impossible to pay down.
“Class” in that sentence refers to a Congressional “class,” as in “freshman class,” or a set of Congressmen elected ir sworn in in a certain year. It does not mean class such as economic or social hierarchy.