Bill Kristol takes stock of the real adults in the room: House Republicans who have been the only people willing to put forward a plan they can stand by

Ryan Streeter
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Great passage from Bill Kristol's post this morning praising House Republicans for being the only transparent, honest, and principled group involved in the present debates:

So the morally bankrupt leaders of our fiscally bankrupt federal government meet feverishly behind closed doors, out of sight of the public they're supposed to represent, to figure out how to paper over the mess they've created. Gangs of senators occasionally emerge from their hideouts to announce deals that would raise taxes and gut defense in response to a crisis caused by domestic spending and entitlements. The gangs roam the halls of the Capitol, invading television studios in order to terrorize the citizenry with the prospect of default and mayhem. They then retreat to their lairs, while Beltway insiders shower them with praise while scorning the actual legislation produced and passed by House Republicans in accord with the norms of democratic government.

It's a weird world in which the gangs he describes are the reasonable "adults in the (hidden, behind-closed-door) room," that phrase so loved by the salonistas, while the Republicans are the extremists out in the hallway or on the lawn. But it's the world we live in.

As I said yesterday in my column, the House Republicans are not extremists. They are responding in a common-sense way to a set of circumstances that in the long run is even worse than they say.

The questions remains: can they take the 16-month view that George Will suggests, and help lead the energetic and impatient tea party into that same 16-month strategy? If so, history will reward them as having deftly managed a debt crisis with sound policy and happy political outcomes, too.

Comments

[Matthew Reynolds]

The Republicans are fighting to stop Obama causing any more economic damage.They are fighting for the noble cause of freedom that the great Ronald Reagan fought for.Conservative values are timeless as they represent the best bulwark against socialist enslavement.

I admire House Republicans for this brave stand in defence of what is right.Had we got a Balanced Budget Amendment in 1995 then this disaster would have been avoided.

Bob Dole & Newt Gingrich are men of vision who where right in 1995 and are right now.As the pithy line goes:'Right is right & left is wrong.' The debate over the debt crisis in the USA seems to prove that old adage right(scuse the pun !).