Beating a debt horse

I know. I know.

You think I'm beating a dead horse over the House Republican failure to freeze the debt limit last month – the one and only action the GOP opposition could have taken to reverse Barack Obama's destruction of the U.S. economy and begin the road back toward constitutionally limited government in the U.S.

Too bad.

There's an old saying: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

That's what I'm afraid Americans may do in 2012 by blindly sending Republican establishment politicians to Washington thinking they are the antidote to business as usual – when, in fact, they are business as usual.

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So, at the risk of repeating myself, I want to recap where we went wrong in 2011.

In 2010, Americans wisely and responsibly sent more than 70 freshman "tea party" Republicans to Washington to take control of the House of Representatives – all of them pledging to freeze the debt limit.

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But something happens to even the best of politicians when they get to Washington. There's a natural desire to get along with the veterans, to be accepted by leadership and to be influenced by the press and lobbyists and what we euphemistically call "the permanent government."

Charitably, that's just what happened very quickly to those well-intended Republican freshmen, as well as many other "conservatives" in the House.

At the end of the day, there were only 22 Republican votes opposing the raising of the debt limit and giving Barack Obama all the money (trillions!) he could misuse for the next two years.

What went wrong?

What I'm about to tell you here goes against all conventional wisdom – the kind of thing you hear from conservative talk radio, the Republican National Committee, the pundit class, etc.

The first mistake was electing John Boehner House speaker. Immediately, Boehner made it known publicly and privately that he had no intention of freezing the debt limit. That was too radical for him. He bought the lie that freezing the debt limit would result in a default on loan obligations and a downgrading of America's credit rating. (Of course, the credit rating was immediately downgraded as a direct result of raising the debt limit and a refusal to cut any spending whatsoever.)

The second mistake was the release of Paul Ryan's much-ballyhooed budget plan that actually increased spending and debt dramatically over 10 years! For the life of me, I still don't understand those conservatives who embraced this cockamamie idea. Paul Ryan was in favor of TARP. Paul Ryan was in favor of bailouts. Paul Ryan is not a fiscal conservative – no matter what anyone else calls him. And his plan was a fiasco that never had a chance for approval by the House and Senate. So what was the point except to signal to Democrats that business as usual in Washington would be accepted ultimately by Republicans, despite their claims to the contrary?

The third mistake was the embrace of the less offensive "cut, cap and balance" plan. It wasn't a terrible idea, except for the fact that it was never going to pass. So what was the point? Republicans held all the cards to do something much more radical – to stop overspending now, to freeze spending now! They didn't need any compromise. They didn't need any Democratic votes. They didn't need Obama's signature. That's the mandate we handed Republicans with the election in 2010. Without House approval, the debt limit could not be raised.

I know I have said all this before in different words. But we must learn from our mistakes or we are doomed to repeat them.

It's time to start thinking outside the box if we're going to save America.

Let's be sure we get it right in 2012. That means we must understand what we did wrong in 2011.