Will GOP be able to stand the heat? ~ By Patrick J. Buchanan

Patrick Buchanan is not trying to be a "grumpy old man" when he writes this, but with "the confident enthusiasm of the new Republican class for the assignment history has given it, the balance of power in this city weighs heavily against its success."

This is not to counsel despair. It is to suggest that the true conservatives and tea-party true believers who gave the GOP its victory in November have won a single major engagement in a long war whose outcome remains very much in doubt.

So, is there any hope that things can change? Was the Tea Party effort pointless? Pat offers this:

As Boehner put it, we can't kick the can up the road anymore, because we've come to the end of the road. Like Greece and Portugal, Ireland and Illinois, New York and New Jersey, we have arrived at Hotel California.

Will GOP be able to stand the heat?

PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

By Patrick J. Buchanan

January 07, 2011 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2011

"The success of a party means little except when the nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose," said Woodrow Wilson in his first inaugural. "No one can mistake the purpose for which the nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party."

As with Wilson's Democrats in 1913, so it is with the Republican Party today. It has been called to power for the "large and definite purpose" of halting the growth of government and putting the nation's fiscal house in order. Whether it can succeed is another matter.

While a visitor to Capitol Hill the day the gavel was passed from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner could not miss the confident enthusiasm of the new Republican class for the assignment history has given it, the balance of power in this city weighs heavily against its success.

Consider. To bring the budget even close to balance in half a decade means cutting projected spending for Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. But any changes here have to be agreed to by Harry Reid's Senate, and then by Barack Obama, who has a veto that the House Republicans have not a prayer of overriding.

And as Obama showed at year's end when he agreed to a two-year extension of George W. Bush's tax cuts in return for payroll tax cuts of his own and new unemployment benefits, the White House will exact a high price for Obama's signature.

READ FULL STORY at WorldNetDaily.com

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