The Tea Party: On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown?

Today, the shutdown of Obama’s government, the suspension of wages and the halt of federal employees’ activities would have marked a major triumph for the tea party and for their power over Washington. But then — wham! This morning the Obama administration managed to save their skin once again, this time by negotiating a $39 billion budget-cut deal with John Boehner and the majority of the House, allowing them to continue working. The tea party is beside itself, the very party that just launched their first campaign for 2012, aimed at bringing down Obama, via their Tea Party Express. The anger has reached a fever pitch. And now, it’s the leader of the House Republicans who is in the crosshairs. How much longer can John Boehner withstand the extremists in his party?

The last government shutdown was 15 years ago under Bill Clinton. How much longer can the Obama administration hold on? President Obama has shown a certain confidence during the Liar’s Poker game of government shutdown, and he hasn’t hesitated to travel — which has been interpreted as a sign of offhandedness — at the very same moment that the leader of the opposition claims that he still had meetings with his counterparts. Has John Boehner been cheated by the 44th? Last week, the tea party supporters from his state, Ohio, wrote him to say that they were keeping an eye on him and that they were ready to take to the streets over the proposed budget cuts.

How to explain that the Republican majority has once again surrendered to Barack Obama in order to pay the Army, the 1.9 million federal employees and [for] their cell phones, etc. …?

The immediate $39 billion cut (out of the $78.5 billion sought by Republicans in the 2011 budget) has clearly not satisfied Sarah Palin, who tweeted, “GOP: Don’t retreat! The country is going broke. We can’t AFFORD cowboy poetry & subsidizing abortion.”* Perhaps more serious is that, among the tea party stars, two congressional representatives have taken a stand against this compromise: Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Michele Bachmann from Minnesota are fiercely hostile to the deal. The two are rising stars of the Republican Party, and they are currently testing out their legitimacy to run in the 2012 primaries. Remember, Michele Bachmann is the woman who answered on behalf of the tea party during Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address, citing budget cuts and positioning herself in the current fray. At the time, the Republican bigwigs would rather not have gotten tangled up with the issue.

But are the voters who see these compromises as proof of Washington’s insufferable contempt, of the collusion of GOP members, and of their violation of the Republican agenda actually ready to take to the streets and rallies, which the Republican Party was hoping to be finished with after the midterm elections?

How can John Boehner continue to boast of not being complicit with that which the tea party hates the most: Washington?