Wishful thinking perhaps, but the tide of madness that has washed over Washington may be ebbing.
A new CNN poll shows even more Americans want tax increases for the wealthy (63 percent) than major cuts in domestic spending (57 percent), leaving Republicans with the highest unfavorable ratings since the Clinton impeachment 13 years ago and Democrats gaining slightly in approval.
Such fallout from the debt-ceiling debacle suggests that voters have finally seen the Tea Party’s true agenda, not of reforming government but destroying it, and started to recoil from the sight.
Whether or not such sentiment is translated to the halls of Congress depends on two GOP leaders, John Boehner and Mitchell McConnell, who have painted themselves into a Tea Party corner and need a rationale for working themselves out of it.
In a column, Thomas Friedman weaves a fantasy about a White House meeting to do just that.
In it, Boehner announces that “our legislators are ready to reopen negotiations immediately on a ‘Grand Bargain’…and that everything will be on the table from our side–including tax reform that closes loopholes and eliminates wasteful subsidies, and, if need be, tax increases. To those who voted for us, rest assured that we will bring our conservative values to these negotiations and an emphasis on markets and meritocracies…
“To my Tea Party colleagues, I say: thank you. Your passion helped spur the nation to action, but the country cannot be governed, and our future secured, by bowing solely to the passions of any single group–liberal or conservative…
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