Thread by @MollyMcKew

Fun story re debt ceiling and the slow sad decline of the GOP.

It was after the election of the Tea Party contingent in 2010 that these bizarre talking points re debt ceiling, misunderstanding it as like a credit card or something, started getting pushed by more GOP electeds /1

https://twitter.com/cwarzel/status/1443247112787927049

Prior to the tea party class arriving in Congress, raising the debt ceiling was like naming a post office. It just got done because whatever. There isn’t another choice unless you don’t understand what it is and want an economic catastrophe to befall Americans /2

Tea party guys started making this a talking point for “grassroots” Americans, implying debt ceiling was incurrence of debt, the irresponsible thing (as opposed to spending & the budget, and let us please remember at this moment how much Trump admin increased nat’l debt) /3

Soon after the 2010 election I was filling a seat at a breakfast “meet & greet” with two tea party freshman from Tennessee or something (who knows), who literally had been elected for their lack of knowledge or experience about governing or government. /4

One had been a medical doctor, I think, the other something like insurance or something.

Anyway, they were now both on the financial services committee & in a room with a bunch of important Washington govt affairs people who wanted to ask them about financial services things /5

To say they were unprepared was an understatement. The debt ceiling debate was already in news, people were nervous. They had no clue what was even being discussed. “It’s hard to go home and tell voters blah blah”

emphasized how fox had spun voters up the words “debt ceiling” /6

Finally the smarter of the two asked the host of the event, a financial services lobbyist and wizard, “well gosh gee, you probably know more than us, what do you think would happen if we don’t raise the debt ceiling? What can we say to our voters?” /7

And this guy just looked at them & blinked & ticked off maybe 5-10 items where American households would be immediately impacted and lose wealth if the debt ceiling was not raised.

“They would notice their pension funds might collapse, and their 401ks would take a hit…” etc /8

These were short, easy points that every household could understand if it was communicated to them by their elected officials, making raising the debt ceiling a non-issue once again.

But it was painfully clear that

1) the tea party wanted this to be a controversy /9

2) the GOP did nothing to provide these members with the most basic talking points to push back/inform voters and help this vote get done

3) then-Obama admin/treasury had also done nothing to educate these members, likely not knowing it was needed/necessary /10

A bunch of clowns instructed by other clowns were willing to walk the nation off a cliff because no one could be bothered to be a grown up when they had been instructed to stir controversy instead. /11

We’re now on like the 5th iteration of the almost-not-raising-the-debt-ceiling crisis, and this gap hasn’t been filled.

Americans would suffer. Immediately. Irreparably. Because something simple has been twisted and ingrained as a nonsense-world talking point… /12

… and the GOP has far fewer actual people with knowledge in elected positions to contain and push back on the walk to the cliff. It’s slo-mo madness.

Experts can see it. Business and industry can see it — tho many of those still write checks to campaigns of moron lemmings /13

Everyone is dancing along to the bacchanal as if they do not know that this craziness will ruin our country — and the frenzy has only increased as tea party—>freedom caucus—>trumper loons—>QAnon bannonite clownery or whatever we have now. /14

You can’t convince them to return the boring to the realm of boring, unnoticed votes because all they have is the controversy and false panic to cover up the real crises they are creating. /fin