COMMENTARY | Tea party members were quick to counter-attack against Sen. John McCain after his remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday. But it appears that many of them ignored his point -- or didn't understand the gist of it or that he was actually making one.
In the growing tension prompted by the political impasse that has become the debt ceiling talks and Congress' inability to come to anything near an agreement on what should be done when the debt ceiling is raised (the raising is nearly a foregone conclusion by most legislators not affiliated with the tea party, which, by and large, believes the debt ceiling should remain static and the government should go into shutdown), McCain spoke about the "foolish" idea that the debt ceiling should be harnessed to a proposal for a balanced budget amendment. He also spoke of House tea party leader Michele Bachmann's promise to not raise the debt ceiling based on some "bizarre" idea that the government could prioritize its bills after shutdown and somehow avoid default (or default on unimportant programs and services).
But it was his reading from a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed that got the tea party riled.
"The idea seems to be," McCain read into the Congressional Record from the Op-Ed, "that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue, and the public will turn en masse against ... Barack Obama. The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.
This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell into GOP Senate nominees. The reality is that the debt limit will be raised one way or another, and the only issue now is with how much fiscal reform and what political fallout."
The fallout from McCain's remarks and his reading was a little more immediate. But the fallout seems to arrived missing his follow-up comment: "To hold out and say we won't agree to raising the debt limit until we pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, it's unfair, it's bizarre," McCain added. "And maybe some people who have only been in this body for six or seven months or so really believe that. Others know better."
He also said that to do so with the balanced budget amendment being offered in its "present presentation" was "foolish."
Sharron Angle, the failed 2010 tea party senate candidate from Nevada, called McCain "Lord of the TARP," referring to McCain's support of the unpopular 2008 Wall Street bailout bill.
"Ironically," Angle blogged on The Hill , "this man campaigned for Tea Party support in his last re-election," -- and for Angle herself as well -- "but now throws Christine O'Donnell and I into the harbor with Sarah Palin. As in the fable, it is the hobbits who are the heroes and save the land. This Lord of the TARP actually ought to read to the end of the story and join forces with the Tea Party, not criticize it."
But McCain was pointing out that the tea party's present course was a fantasy, a point that seems to be missed. As did at least one elected tea party Republican.
"I think in reading the books, the hobbits were the heroes," Rep. Rand Paul said in a conference call with Politico . "They overcame great obstacles, and I think I'd rather be a hobbit than a troll."
Tea Party Patriots leader Mark Meckler told CNN "clearly he's been corrupted by the ring of power."
In his own defense, McCain told Sean Hannity at Fox News Channel that he wasn't actually attacking the Tea Party itself, but the idea that shutting down the government would be blamed solely on President Obama if Republicans continued down their present course.
Sen. McCain will undoubtedly steer clear of literary allusions -- or borrowed literary allusions -- in the future.
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