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“But I think the conservatives in the House of Representatives did a hell of a job.”

I would LOVE to believe this, really I would. If you mean the Tea Party conservatives that stood up against this deal and ultimately voted against it, I agree. If you mean leadership, they have proven that they are gutless and unwilling to fight for conservative principles.

We sent them there last November primarily to do 2 things:

1. Stop the out of control spending.

2. Repeal Obamacare-and short of a repeal at the very least de-fund it.

They fought for neither in this deal. They paid lip service to the “Cut, Cap and Balance” plan that was supported by almost the entire House GOP caucus and 66% of the American people, then they didn’t even force the Senate to VOTE on it. They allowed them to table it and quickly came up with a “compromise.”

“Cut, Cap & Balance” doesn’t really go far enough, but it would have been a good step in the right direction. But Boehner and the leadership showed that they weren’t really interested in fighting for REAL change. They were more afraid of being blamed if the govn’t “defaulted”, which was a lie from the beginning that no one in leadership ever challenged.

The right play would have been to hold the line on “Cut, Cap & Balance” and force them to either take it or not raise the debt ceiling. I know the media would have been all over them for that, but aren’t they already being accused of being “hostage takers?” The media will go after us no matter what, so why not get something substantive out of it?

No, this is not a win at all. This does nothing to curve spending. Boehner and Co. promised in the campaign to roll back spending to 2008 levels “for starters.” Now, they’re not even talking about doing that. They are allowing the $800 billion “1 time” stimulus of 2009 to be added permanently to the baseline. The so called cuts spoken of in this deal (if they ever materialize) are simply small reductions in the projected rate of growth in spending. They should be fighting to do away with the whole “base line budgeting” system that causes these people to lie to us by calling smaller spending increases cuts, but I saw none of that in this debate either.

As for Obamacare, there seems to be no concern whatsoever about de-funding it or fighting for its repeal. The American people still overwhelmingly support its repeal, but NOT ONE WORD was spoken about it by leadership. That tells me that they are just fine with Obamacare becoming the law of the land and making us into more of a socialist nation.

No, this is not a victory. In fact, I am more disheartened than I’ve been since the 2008 elections. These GOP leaders need to be replaced. That’s the only solution to this problem. We need to primary as many of them as possible and get new blood in there. Boehner needs to go and we need someone to replace him that actually GETS the fact that our republic is hanging by a thread.

Sadly, I don’t detect the outrage that is deserved at what just happened. Too many on our side are willing to go along with this media-driven narrative that it’s a “victory for the Tea Party” simply because we are now “talking” about cutting spending. I’ll grant that it’s a good thing that we have shifted the debate, but it doesn’t mean jack if it’s not followed up by REAL, SUBSTANTIVE spending cuts.

The only hope we have now is a presidential candidate that truly gets the need to cut spending and balance our budget and is willing to fight even his/her own party in congress to do it. Bush did the opposite. I think most of our candidates are ‘ruling class’ types just like Bush, so I doubt they will do anything different. So where does that leave us?