Pat Buchanan asks here if such is indeed the case and explains the problem the Tea Party faces in putting the breaks on big government. Is America on a course to rack and ruin that is all but irreversible? I believe we are until such time as Americans of all persuasions can come together and get the Washington political monkey off our backs. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats will get the job done until they are forced to change. And the Tea Party, as now configured, is too fractured and divided to get the job done. Who is the powerful, driving force of the Tea Party? I do not see such a person. Where is the Tea Party’s John Galt?

“There is no education in the second kick of a mule,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

With some such thought in mind, Speaker John Boehner strode to the floor of the House to offer a “clean” debt ceiling bill and relied on Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats to pass it. They did.

“Surrender” and “betrayal,” are among the epithets coming the Speaker’s way.

Yet Boehner was holding a losing hand. Had he added a GOP wish-list bill to the debt ceiling, Harry Reid’s Senate would have rejected it. President Obama would have denounced it as putting at risk the full faith and credit of the United States.

Big Media would have piled on. The markets would have been rattled. The Dow would have begun to swoon. Corporate America, cash cow of the Republican Party, would have begun to howl.

A clamor to pass a clean debt ceiling bill or risk a new recession would have arisen. And the House Republicans would have caved, as they finally had to cave on the budget bill last fall.

Rather than play Lord Raglan and lead his cavalry in another Charge of the Light Brigade, Boehner chose to withdraw to fight another day on another field.

Yet, the Tea Party has a right to feel cheated.

When does the Republican Party, put in power by the Tea Party, plan to honor its commitment to halt the growth of the Federal monolith and bring the budget back into balance? Is there is any hope things will be different, should the Tea Party help produce a GOP Senate in 2014?