"Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a founding member of the Senate's Tea Party Caucus [which, by the way, with yesterday's revival-meeting addition of Kansas Senator Jerry Moran, is either menacingly up to four or pleasingly circumscribed at four, depending on how one looks at it], has pledged to filibuster legislation to increase the debt ceiling," reports The Hill.
(Before moving on to the meat of that quote, let's have a parenthetical moment of reflection on its bracketed insertion.
True, the rather subdued results of the Senate Tea Party Caucus's membership drive -- the two senators above are matched only by the two of Jim DeMint and Rand Paul -- had to come as an enormous disappointment to tea party organizers. But in their valiant tradition of make-believe reality, they now simply count and include non-members as members and thus swell their ranks through the same hocus-pocus by which they'll "reduce" the deficit.
"Thank you for sending me some help," exclaimed a rapturous DeMint, thanking the air, at the aforementioned revival meeting. "I need these guys here. Thank you so much for sending them, Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey [and] Ron Johnson" -- among whom only Sen. Toomey even bothered to appear.
One of these days, some expert de-programmer -- hired by Mitch McConnell? -- is going to throw a steel-reinforced net over DeMint and go to work.)
Anyway, back to Lee, whose upcoming Pickett's Charge against the Yankee spendthrifts of Washington promises more smoke and noise but even less success than the original, has now fired on the engulfing debt of socialist Obama's Fort Sumter. And he's done so with DeMint's selfsame ease of logic and wistful insouciance: "I'm against raising the debt ceiling and so I'm resisting it," declared Lee, simple as that.
What a happy, one-dimensionally caressing world he lives in. He don't like it, he don't like it at all, so he's votin' agin it; as opposed, presumably, to those other senators who'll vote for it because ... well, they just love debt, and can't get enough of it.
But wait. What's this cunning, diabolically clever and somewhat devilishly oleaginous I'm resisting it? Lordy lord, my error. Lee did not, in fact, say he'll be voting against raising the debt ceiling. He said he's against raising it and resists the very hideous idea of it. But he did not say he's voting against it.
How can this be? To what heavenly loophole can we attribute this seeming loss of tea-partyesque virtue?
Why of course. The vintage dodge, the enduring classic, that ingratiating tribute to transcendent nothingness: "The only scenario in which I can imagine not using the filibuster," added Lee, head bowed, eyes darting, tongue sweeping his disingenuous lips, "is if the leadership of both parties agree that as a condition of that they would first pass out a balanced-budget amendment."
Whew. That was a close one. Thank God for the salvational prattle of that old political chestnut, the Balanced-Budget Amendment -- Commandment One in the nine-repeating Decalogue of "Thou shalt fake accountability."