The History of Federal Budget Crisis: A Tea Party Coup?

Repeal or we will destroy USA!

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

When people discover my passion for history, they usually respond:

History is so boring, how can you find it so interesting?

My response is the above Orwellian quote.

In my words, understanding history is a prerequisite for understanding the present. And if one truly understands the present, one can exert more influence in shaping the future.

The USA government is mired in chaos -- no secret. If we strip away the double-talk, political spin and the garden variety bull shit, our collective vision becomes closer to 20-20. When we take a step back from the precipice of USA credit default, we can see the forest through the trees.

Obamacare, government shutdown and debt ceiling are all issues being used by the far right to launch a stealth government coup.

Yea, I used the C-word.

The GOP/Tea Party, urged on by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, have loudly protested Obamacare. They use the ridiculous charade of concern for individual freedom as their rationale. Imagine that: the GOP party, the party of big business is now concerned about the little guy!

Poppycock.

I may have been born at night but not last night. I agree, ACA or Obamacare is not perfect. It could use honest brokered tweaks from the right and left sides of the aisle. But let's not kid ourselves: it is about Obamacare but it ain't about Obamacare. These folks have been planning this coup for a minute.

Just think...

As the color hue and voter make-up becomes more diverse, a simmering panic has gripped the old guard. A vice grip that becomes tighter and tighter each year.

They (the GOP) can not win the majority of congressional elections without gerrymandered safe districts; and it has become vastly more difficult to win national elections by relying on their current demographics.

Obamacare served as a stark manifestation the new-new reality.

The GOP lost to this law by congressional vote -- in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Not holding the keys to the Executive branch, the law was sign by the president. The SCOTUS upheld the constitutionality of the law. And the voters re-hired the namesake of Obamacare.

What's left? A voter nullification by a right wing coup.

The history of the coup.

New York Times


A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning   By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MIKE McINTIRE    

WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
       

It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

      

“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”

      

Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.

      

To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.  read entire article