Now, liken that to a risky surgical procedure: who bears the risk? Not the surgeon.

Krauthammer and others can pontificate till the cows come home, but nothing can avert this train wreck except drastic measures. The GOP house flinched. They missed the opportunity to put this mess in BHO’s lap and the laps of the senate dems. Now, they too are tainted.

BTW, I’m all for repealing the 17th along with the 16th, the 23rd, and the 26th. And I fervently support requiring everything DC does to pass the test of the 9th & 10th. And yes, that is but a dream.

“texexec:
I agree with most of what you said at 3:40 pm, except that the Senate is not functioning as the Founders intended, ever since the ratification of the 17th Amendment. A Senate that still represented the states’ interests would be a powerful check on the runaway growth of the federal government. That’s what the Founders had in mind.”

You make a good point, rickl. The pre-17th amendment way of putting people into the senate WAS a better way than now.

The Senate does temper what the House does now but it’s a washed out version of how things used to work.

Republicans currently have large majorities in lots of states’ legislatures. Wouldn’t if be great if they could select our senators?

Of course, if ya get right down to it, our founders didn’t intend that anyone “of age” who breathes should be able to vote either.

Heck…in South Texas and Chicago, some people get to vote who DON’T still breathe.

On retrospection, I see what is animating my thoughts and it is Krauthammer’s rebuke to the very people who risked something. And then incorporating into his argument someone like Scott Walker whose demeanor literally shouts friendliness and bi-partisanship but his actions were 100% heroically no compromise– incorporating him as if that were an example of what Krauthammer endorsed. Walker stood strong and alone. The compromisers did not. They gave into fear.

To persist with the carrier analogy, one must consider that the command deck is peopled with idiots and the malevolent, the helm is not hard over, the engines are at slow forward, the radar is inoperative or ignored.

The SuperCommittee will be a disaster. Vicious assaulters(Cliburn for one) are in the same cage with softies (e.g. Kyl) and nothing good will emerge-one of the Repubs will cave, a la Boehner, and that will be that.

We are at the point where one must ask whether playing by the rules must be abandoned. And act.

This is the real test of the character of our nation: The tea party initiates the hard measures necessary to restore prosperity, there is genuine distress, but the people remain true. We weather the storm and for a generation the liberals are discredited.

Want more? Wanna “keep the Republic”? Then do everything you can to help the Republicans capture a BIG majority in the Senate, keep the majority in the House, and elect a Republican president in 2012.

Look at some of Krauthammer’s language: “change this fundamental should not be enacted quietly.”

“Change this fundamental?” We’ve gone so far around the bend that what the tea partier’s want is “change so fundamental?” Reminds me of a joke: A man comes home, finds a man in bed with his wife. Wife says, “Look who’s here, big mouth. Now the whole neighborhood will know.”

Our freakish government is so far gone that the big perspective has been lost. Our country is committing adultery and were told to keep our mouth shut.

The voting mob “can’t be dealt with. It feels no pity. It wants you dead. And it will not stop ever.” But I digress here into “hysteria,” and I would spare you that.

Another one: “It deserves big, serious, animated public debate.”

It does? Between whom? Fools and people answering fools? Krauthammer is bestowing legitimacy upon fools; it’s been poverty and the threat of poverty which, for quite some time now, has turned the tide. Not debate.

There is fear and denial which seeks to provide a false assurance and it asserts, “Everything is okay. Hey, our system still works.”

Our system is broken because the actors therein are broken. We have enslaved our children, threatened our security, and now one little non-victory and our system works?

Small victory, perhaps, the debt deal. Certainly, not a huge one, but to a people accustomed to losing, it seems large. Wisconsin was a great victory, but not the debt debate which will turn out on the outside just as it is on the inside.

There’s no such thing as just the system. Thank God for the system but like Franklin told the questing lady, “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Krauterhammer is right that our slow and messy system works. It gives the people time to rethink the old givens and form a new consensus. The leftist fringe is losing its allure. They just didn’t know when to stop.