Tea Party will shut the government down?

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Op-Ed Columnist

Why Wouldn’t the Tea Party Shut It Down?

By FRANK RICH

Published: February 26, 2011

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NO one remembers anything in America, especially in Washington, so the history of the Great Government Shutdown of 1995 is being rewritten with impunity by Republicans flirting with a Great Government Shutdown of 2011. The bottom line of the revisionist spin is this: that 2011 is no 1995. Should the unthinkable occur on some coming budget D-Day — or perhaps when the deadline to raise the federal debt ceiling arrives this spring — the G.O.P. is cocksure that it can pin the debacle on the Democrats.

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Frank Rich

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In the right’s echo chamber, voters are seen as so fed up with deficits that they’ll put principle over temporary inconveniences — like, say, a halt in processing new Social Security applicants or veterans’ benefit checks. Who needs coddled government workers to deal with those minutiae anyway? As Mike Huckabee has cheerfully pointed out, many more federal services are automated now than in the olden days of the late 20th century. Phone trees don’t demand pensions.end quote

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/opinion/27rich.html

I don't think the Tea Party understands that if they shut down the government it will be the end of the Tea Party because even the Republicans will eventually blame the Tea Party to absolve themselves if they shut the government down like Gingrich did in 1995. Rhetoric is one thing but shutting the government down completely only harms the common man. And when that happens the average common man who might not be a Tea Party person is going to get very pissed off!