I don’t use “Tea Party” any more because the fact is the Republican Party is staffed and run by members of what was once called the Tea Party. I also don’t use “treason” very much. Perhaps because during the run up to the Iraq war it was overused, and made meaningless, by those who argued that opposition to President Bush’s lamebrain adventure in Iraq was treasonous.
Nevertheless, whether you use John Carney’s ‘Tea Party’ to give your Republican friends an “out” or you use “Republican” to describe the vandals in the House of Representative, one thing is clear. Modern Republicans have changed the country for the worse. As Bloomberg points out:
These tactics have long-term costs. If the U.S. defaults on its debt because a handful of Republican legislators don’t like a law vetted by all branches of government, the damage will go beyond a much lower credit rating. Something else — a sense that the U.S. is, for all its differences, united — will have been lost.
As vandals, I’m very sure the Republicans don’t give a flying fuck about the fact that (for all of our differences) we are were united. In fact, defunding the ACA can be seen as a convenient ruse. The real end game is American disunity. Even if they lose every other thing they claim to want, they will have won disunity. It was their ongoing project since Kennedy – and now they have it.