The great issue uniting and motivating the Republican Party and Tea Party is the deficit-debt crisis, a national debt nearing 100 percent of gross domestic product and a deficit of 10 percent of GDP.
As to the cause of the deficit that could precipitate a run on the dollar, double-digit inflation, even a default, the Tea Party and GOP also agree — federal spending that consumes 25 percent of GDP.
The neocons are nervous the Tea Party may not sign up to soldier on for the empire. Writing in the Washington Post, Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly of AEI have sniffed out the unmistakable scent of "isolationism" among Tea Party favorites.
They are warning that the old right and Tea Party might unite in a "combination of Ebenezer Scrooge and George McGovern, withdrawing from the world to a countinghouse America."
Sorry, but the old neocon name-calling won’t cut it this time.
Why should Americans, 65 years after World War II, be defending rich Europeans from a Soviet Union that has been dead for 20 years, so those same Europeans can cut their defense budgets to protect their social safety nets?
