Some of my friends among the congressional Tea Partiers are all hang-dog about the debt-ceiling deal, seeing it as yet another lost opportunity to turn things around in this rotten borough known as Washington. I understand the feeling, but they do themselves a disservice.
To see why, imagine a baseball hurled by a pitcher at 95 mph. That ball looks like an aspirin to the batter, who sees it for only a split second as he decides whether to swing his bat.
If the batter makes contact, something magnificent happens: The ball comes to a dead stop in an instant. For about 1/1,000th of a second, it is motionless, a round sphere compressed almost flat. Then it explodes in the opposite direction at an even greater velocity.
Now picture the Washington establishment as the pitcher on the mound, a master of deception able to throw everything; from an evil curveball that drops away like a stone to that high, hard inside fastball, usually thrown at the rookie with the shaky legs at the plate. Plus, searing sliders and floating knucklers.
You can guess where the Tea Partiers are in this scenario. Obama’s demand for a “clean” debt-ceiling increase was the establishment’s first pitch, followed by an assortment of dastardly curves like the Gang of Six plan, a slider in the form of an $800 billion tax increase, and, finally, three Boehner/Reid/McConnell plans, which were all screaming fastballs.
Despite catcalls, taunts and worse from the home crowd, and conflicting signals from their coaches, the Tea Partiers hung in there, got a full count, crowded the plate, and then, whack!
Sure enough, the ball stopped. For the first time in 50 years, federal spending next year will be lower than it is this year.
But now the ball is smashed flat as a pancake against that Louisville Slugger, hanging motionless, ready to spring back in the opposite direction. We won’t know where it will go until the batter completes the swing, which in this game takes months.
If the Tea Party swung under the ball, it will just be a pop-up into shallow left field. A late swing probably means a twisting liner to the first or second baseman, or maybe a soft fly to right field.
But, if that Tea Party bat’s sweet spot collided with the ball, it’s headed into orbit and ain’t nobody in the ball park gonna catch it!
In other words, what the Tea Party folks in Congress and out there in the heartland do in the weeks ahead will determine the direction of the ball that is the debt-ceiling deal. They’ve got to follow through.
For example, they should be making the case right now that, if House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell want to show they really mean business, they will name six Tea Partiers to the GOP slots on the Super Congress.
And Tea Partiers should vow revenge for treachery on any one of these six critical appointments by withholding their votes on important issues come September and October. Surely they’ve learned in the past six weeks that holding to principle is its own kind of leverage.
Plus, they better have their own plans for cutting spending, plans that go beyond the debt-ceiling deal’s parameters because that’s what the American people want.
The pressure must be constant, continuous and contentious, otherwise, it’s just talk. Sens. Orrin Hatch and Tom Coburn just introduced such a plan for the government work force that will save $600 billion.
Finally, it’s time to crank up the folks back home. Fall is a wonderful time to visit the nation’s capital.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner.
