The Tea Party's Next Challenge

Yuval Levin and Peter Wehner wrote a useful editorial in Friday's edition of the Wall Street Journal entitled The Tea Party's Achilles' Heel.

They argue, correctly, I believe, that the Tea Party movement will have shown itself to be a one-hit wonder if its constituents don't follow their focus on current federal spending with equally serious attention to reforming and reducing the immense promised, but unaffordable social program benefits in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The authors note how quickly Michele Bachmann backpedaled on Paul Ryan's sensible budget which included entitlement reforms. That her fellow GOP presidential candidates have also remained largely silent on details of entitlement cuts.

Theirs is, I believe, the only really insightful critique of the Tea Party movement which I've read. Ironically, it comes from the right, not the left, and suggests that movement might not go far enough, instead of branding it a domestically-based group of fiscal terrorists, as the administration and some Democratic Congress members have done.