The wingnut’s “Jedi Council” and the glowing past of future debt ceiling brinksmanship

While the teabagger dreams of a no holds barred apocalyptic debt ceiling fight that would leave Obamacare defunded and the having the budget balanced on the strength of Paul Ryan’s tax-cut magic beans seem to be fading, I read this story of how the wingnuts WANTED it to go down, and it is “the crazy.”

Here is the deal. In the January following Obama’s reelection, conservative lobby groups were worried that House Republicans would lose their resolve to fight Obamacare on the beaches, on the seas and oceans, and in the air, whatever the cost may be.. (This is before the rise of Ted Cruz and the GOP Senators move to into the wingnut limelight.) So Michael Needham, the CEO of Heritage Action for America, and Chris Chocola, a former congressman and now president of the Club for Growth were let into a super secret meetings of a group of hardcore nutbags led by Paul Ryan. The group – no shit – called themselves the “Jedi Council.” The council used their mind control powers to persuade the wingnut lobby groups that they had a plan to crush the ACA. It was a plan that kicked off at the GOP retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia.

On the morning of the last day of the GOP’s January retreat in Williamsburg, Va., the Jedi Council met with Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the House leadership and struck a deal. The agreement, which rank-and-file Republicans reverently describe as the “Williamsburg Accord,” began with re-sequencing: In exchange for allowing a short-term debt-ceiling increase, House Republicans would make the modest demand that the Senate pass a budget for the first time in four years.

But the accord also included a promise from leadership to pass a budget that would come into balance within ten years, and to make enacting the reforms in that budget a goal of the debt-ceiling fight — priorities that had just been laid out in an open letter 40 conservative leaders had sent to House leadership. What has not been understood is that the Williamsburg Accord was as much an agreement between the Jedi Council and Boehner as it was between the Jedi Council and the conservative movement.

What a glorious future they envisioned.