“Boehner might need a few Democratic votes to pass the deal — that was always a likely outcome. But the narrative constantly pushed by Democrats and the media — that ‘extreme’ Tea Party members would force him to shut down the government — never materialized. As a result, not only does it look like Boehner got the best deal in terms of spending cuts, but he also comes off as the most reasonable actor in the debate, the one who worked the hardest to reach a compromise.

“Republicans should feel plenty confident heading into the upcoming debates over the debt ceiling and the 2012 budget. This deal, thanks to Boehner’s robust leadership, was a good start. But it’s only the beginning.”

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“‘According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. budget deficit in the first six months of the current fiscal year totaled $830 billion. So you can imagine we’re not very impressed by a deal that cuts an almost trivial $38 billion,’ says Tea Party Express spokesman Levi Russell. ‘It just shows that the Tea Party has a lot more work to do in ousting the spending-addicted liberal Democrats who refuse to stop acting like selfish children incapable of making the tough decisions voters have demanded.’…

“Phillips, who has been very critical recently of House Speaker John Boehner’s actions when it comes to the budget, asks in an email to supporters, ‘Can someone please tell me how this is anything other than John Boehner hauling up the white flag because he is unwilling to fight? Can anyone please tell me how this is anything but a complete victory for the liberal Democrats, who want to keep spending this country into bankruptcy and poverty?'”

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“Obama bragged about ‘making the largest annual spending cut in our history.’ Harry Reid joined him, repeatedly calling the cuts ‘historic.’ It fell to Boehner to give a clipped, businesslike statement on the deal. If you were just tuning in, you might’ve thought Boehner had been arguing for moderation, while both Obama and Reid sought to cut deeper. You would never have known that Democrats had spent months resisting these ‘historic’ cuts, warning that they’d cost jobs and slow the recovery…

“So why were Reid and Obama so eager to celebrate Boehner’s compromise with his conservative members? The Democrats believe it’s good to look like a winner, even if you’ve lost. But they’re sacrificing more than they let on. By celebrating spending cuts, they’ve opened the door to further austerity measures at a moment when the recovery remains fragile. Claiming political victory now opens the door to further policy defeats later.”

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“What’s about to hit America is not a ‘shock.’ It’s not an earthquake, it’s not a tsunami, it’s what Paul Ryan calls ‘the most predictable crisis in the history of our country.’ It has one cause: spending. The spending of the class that laughs at the class that drives to work to maintain President Obama, Senator Reid, Senator Baucus, Senator Harkin, and Minority Leader Pelosi’s “communications director” in their comforts and complacency…

“I said the Democrats’ plan is to ‘end America as we know it,’ but even that has been outsourced to others. The choice is between letting Paul Ryan end Medicare as we know it, or letting our foreign lenders determine the moment to end America as we know it. I would not presume to know Chinese or Russian or Saudi or even European inclinations in this respect, although certain shifts in the ratio between short-term and long-term debt holdings suggest foreign governments give more thought to the implications of U.S. government spending than the U.S. government does. But I do know their interests are not ours, and that there will come a day when Beijing and others, in the words of King Barack to his lowly subject, ‘may want to think about a trade-in.'”

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