The tea party, the most welcome political development since the Goldwater insurgency in 1964, lacks only the patience necessary when America lacks the consensus required to propel fundamental change through our constitutional system of checks and balances. If Washington's trajectory could be turned as quickly as tea partyers wish -- while conservatives control only one-half of one of the two political branches -- their movement would not be as necessary as it is. Fortunately, not much patience is required.
The Goldwater impulse took 16 years to reach fruition in the election of Ronald Reagan. The tea party can succeed in 16 months by helping elect a president who will not veto necessary reforms. To achieve that, however, tea partyers must not help the incumbent achieve his objectives in the debt-ceiling dispute.
One of those is to strike a splashy bargain involving big -- but hypothetical and nonbinding -- numbers. This would enable President Obama to run away from his record and run as a debt-reducing centrist. Another Obama objective is tax increases that shatter Republican unity and dampen the tea party's election-turning intensity. Because he probably can achieve neither, he might want market chaos in coming days so Republicans henceforth can be cast as complicit in the wretched recovery that is his administration's ugly signature. CONTINUE READING
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