I swear, someone over at WSJ must be a glutton for punishment!

These columns drew much notice after John McCain quoted our July 27 “tea party hobbits” line on the Senate floor. Senator (sic) Sharron Angle responded that “it is the hobbits who are the heroes and save the land.” Well, okay, but our point was that there’s no such thing as a hobbit. Passing a balanced budget amendment this year is a similar fantasy. Yet outfits like the Club for Growth used the amendment as an excuse to flip from opposing the Boehner plan to supporting it. Maybe it should be the Club for Futile Fiscal Gestures.

The main result of this pointless crusade has been to damage Mr. Boehner’s leverage and push the final debt-limit increase in Mr. Reid’s direction. The Speaker may now have to seek the tender mercies of Nancy Pelosi to get a final bill through the House, and who knows what her price will be.

The debt-limit hobbits should also realize that at this point the Washington fracas they are prolonging isn’t helping their cause. Republicans are not looking like adults to whom voters can entrust the government.

Obviously, the author of these WSJ articles doesn’t comprehend that even though Hobbits were fictional characters created in Tolkien’s writing, comparing Conservatives and the Tea Party to Hobbits is something that we are more likely to take as a compliment rather than the back-handed insult that it was intended to be.

The biggest problem here is that for years on end, politicians have been able to take an attitude of “business as usual” within the realm of politics, while compromising for the sake of “bipartisanship” on things that have increased our debt, imposed up on our freedoms, and put our nation’s future at risk.  This kind of mentality is very much so entrenched in their minds, and at this point, more than anything else, they simply want to find a way to get back to “business as usual”.

For over two decades, no portion of our society has really challenged those in the realm of politics on how this mentality influenced their actions and how their actions affected the direction that our nation is moving in socially and economically.  These politicians saw this as becoming the “new norm” in our society and welcomed it gladly because it reduced and/or eliminated their responsibility to be held accountable to We the People of this nation.

But now, we have this uprising of sorts.  Citizens who have never been active in the realm of politics in the past are realizing that if we don’t take a stand and if we don’t push the issue, this nation WILL go the way of Greece, Ireland, Italy, etc.  Politicians find themselves being challenged now…challenged to change their own mindset, challenged to focus more on what is actually the wiser choice to make for the sake of our nation’s future than to take the path of least resistance by continuing to conform to the “business as usual” mentality.

It’s relatively obvious that those in the realm of politics and those in the media who want to just continue with the status quo of “business as usual”, which will only makes things worse than they are, somehow magically depend on a totally fictional and illusionary invisible benefactor of unknown source of their own making to save our nation’s future somewhere down the road.  They have their own share of fantasies, which are far more unrealistic than any the Tea Party or Conservatives might be deemed of having.

These “business as usual” proponents very seriously and bitterly resent any efforts being made by Conservatives and/or those in the Tea Party who want to see our elected officials stop acting like spendthrifts and stop wreaking havoc with our lives with their foolish and incredibly short-sighted political games that they have been accustomed to playing.

Now, if that means Conservatives and folks in the Tea Party have to take on the roles of the remarkably persistent and determined Hobbits to make sure that we get the kind of people elected into office that will hold themselves accountable first and foremost to behave responsibly for the sake of preserving this nation, then so be it.  We’ll take this one on gladly with no regrets, no fear, and no shame.

The days of the status quo and politics as usual are over.  That era is now dead and gone.

The era of fiscal responsibility has begun.