Beware of Rinos Drinking Tea

Well, the votes have been counted, and it appears the Democrats and Republicans have now passed a ‘fiscal cliff’ deal that represents a big tax increase with no significant long term spending cuts.  Outspoken critics of this deal include Senators Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and other Tea Party favorites,

What Speaker John Boehner has managed to accomplish with his adept political deal-making skill is to get the GOP blamed for the biggest tax increase in the last two decades while simultaneously increasing the deficit and kicking the spending cuts down the road for ‘another day‘ that, most agree, will never come.  And, to add insult to injury, the mainstream media is in full propaganda mode blaming the teaparty for obstructionism and a ‘bad deal‘ even though the teaparty has been pretty much united against this proposal from the start.

What does the GOP stand for?  Limited government?  Low taxes? Controlling spending? Balanced budgets? Fiscal responsibility? State sovereignty? Liberty?  From seeing the legislation written and passed by the GOP over the last 20 years, I see very little coming out of the leadership of this Republican Party that bears any resemblance to the current GOP party platform or the Reagan-style conservatism that built conservative majorities in the 80′s.

Interestingly, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor voted no on this deal, which initially puzzled me (considering he’s been brokering this deal with Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all along), but I’ve had an epiphany this morning and believe I may have discovered the motive behind Cantor’s vote….

The balance has tipped in the GOP controlled house, and the vote for this particular bill has made that clear. The majority of Republicans in the House voted against this bill, meaning that the establishment-wing of the GOP (led by Boehner and others) is now in the minority. The ‘leash‘ the establishment had placed on the teaparty coalition has been removed, and ‘going along‘ with GOP leadership is no longer a foregone conclusion.  Cantor is very much an establishment Republican .. so why did he join the teaparty coalition in this vote?

Simple, Boehner is facing a vote on Thursday by GOP House Republicans on whether or not he will remain as Speaker of the House. The establishment needs to have a viable alternative to put forth if it becomes clear they will not have the votes to keep Boehner in the job .. so along comes the mysterious Cantor ‘pro-teaparty‘ vote just in time to give them that establishment alternative to Boehner. Does anyone really believe Cantor is a teaparty Republican?  I certainly don’t. 

Beware of Rinos drinking tea. These politicians will sell their souls for power. If the House GOP wants to throw out Boehner for being too liberal on taxes and spending, they had better look elsewhere for an alternative. Replacing Boehner with Cantor is like replacing Charlie Sheen with Lindsay Lohan.  Both Boehner and Cantor are bad news for fiscal conservatives, and neither have any desire to get this out-of-control deficit spending under control.