Can Harry Reid wait out the Tea Party? The Senate majority leader seems to think so.
Reid sat down with more than 30 Review-Journal staffers Friday afternoon for an hour-long Q&A session at the newspaper's offices. The bulk of the back and forth was dedicated to federal spending and how Congress might tame exploding budget deficits.
Reid blamed everything that ails Washington and the nation on Republicans. He slammed the GOP for its refusal to go along with tax increases as part of this month's debt-ceiling deal, saying hard-core fiscal conservatives are making it impossible to strike a long-term deal that slows the growth of the national debt.
"(Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell has done a good job bringing the country to a standstill," Reid said.
The reason Republicans have drawn such a deep line in the sand on tax increases, of course, is the Tea Party movement. The populist uprising that was born from Washington's bailouts achieved critical mass after Democrats decided to start spending like no government before. The stimulus. The ObamaCare overreach. Budget deficits that made President George W. Bush look like a piker.
Democrats were tossed from office in record numbers last November. That groundswell is shaping the 2012 campaign.
But Reid doesn't expect it to last.
"The Tea Party was the result of a terrible economy," he said. "I've said that many times, and I believe that."
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
"Denial gives way to acceptance; acceptance breeds dependence." Under The Dome
THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT is dependence upon oneself.....when denial comes first it let's other machines/systems in for one to accept...so accept yourself and who you are....dont let the system deny you that
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS