James Joyner: Constitutional Conservatives are "Insane"

Writing at Outside the Beltway, James Joyner derides those who would save the Republic from fiscal apocalypse:

Sane Republicans Trying to Take Party Back

...That there’s no plausible way that Cruz and company will get what they want here has been blindingly obvious for quite some time, yet they’ve insisted on driving over the cliff.

Leaving aside for a moment that this is a criminal waste of taxpayer money and that it’s bad for the country becomes more obvious by the hour, it’s a political disaster for the Republican Party.

...Moreover, their “government is bad” mantra gets weaker with each news story about government services and programs that got shut down that seem pretty useful after all.

Useful. Yeah, I mean, without non-essential workers, who would barricade the open-air World War II Memorial from veterans?

One pragmatic and honest commenter responded to Joyner's bizarre insults (slightly edited for readability).

The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government.

This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure. –James Madison, Federalist 58

What is insane is a government that borrows 42 cents of every dollar it spends.

What is insane is an unconstitutional law, passed illegally as a budget measure when there is no budget, that has been rewritten a dozen times by the President to carve out exceptions for big businesses and cronies.

What is insane is a government whose own actuaries say existing entitlements are poised to collapse — and then creates an even bigger and more debt-ridden entitlement program against the will of the people.

What is insane is a government that now runs up an NPV operating deficit of $7 trillion a year and monetizes virtually all federal debt to keep interest rates under control.

Cruz and Lee are among the few sane ones left — because they understand mathematics, facts, logic, reason and history — who try to abide by our nation’s highest law, which you and the Beltway elites never mention: the Constitution.

History is replete with tales of countries that have failed the way that we are failing. Beholden to a charismatic demagogue and fueled by a cult of personality, those that believe the banal, Utopian and paradisiacal promises are the ideological descendants of countless failed societies.

And that, my friends, is what is truly insane.

Especially for Mr. Joyner: "Don't cry for me, America".