A video (from the Daily Caller) reveals the Republican Party's real angst about the Tea Party.

David Brooks (the Gray Lady's idea of a housebroken conservative) laments, to PBS's Judy Woodruff that Republican legislators like Ted Cruz aren't "normal members. . . going to Congress to create coalitions, make alliances and . . . pass a lot of legislation" while interesting themselves in "the perks . . . the leadership has to offer." Indeed, Brooks asserts, "They're not [real] legislators" at all -- just obstructionists "who want to stop things."

All of which conversely implies Brooks believes real legislators are ones who go to Congress only because they can pass lots of legislation, create coalitions, make alliances, interest themselves in the perks the leadership has to offer, avoid obstructionism, and fail to stop anything.

"The Tea Party types," says Brooks, are "running against the Republican establishment[,] . . . having a very obstructive role, and making John Boehner's life even more difficult." Indeed, Brooks moans, they have no real policy goals at all and "Their [only] object is to take over the Republican Party."

Let's devoutly hope Brooks knows whereof he speaks. One could hardly ask for a better divination of what the Tea Party's real aspiration should be than Brooks' denunciation of Ted Cruz and what Mark Shields (Brooks' Democratic "sparring partner" in the video) disparages as "these people . . . the Tea Party people . . . the ruin or rule people -- mostly ruin because they're not really interested in ruling . . . " Let's hope so because the present establishment duopoly which is, in fact, very much interested in ruinously ruling constitutes, in reality, little more than a one-party state in which either party, if the other didn't exist, would have to invent it in order merely to preserve the illusion of a two-party state subject to substantive political opposition.

In political reality, there has in living memory been no conservative political party in the United States. There is none now; and, absent reforming the Republican Party or creating a third party, there will be none in the future.

The Republican Party isn't the Democratic Party's conservative opposition. Had it been, government spending at all levels wouldn't now equal almost 40% of the nation's gross domestic product (versus under 10% a century ago), over 40% of the citizenry wouldn't now be receiving some type of government assistance (versus virtually none a century ago), Federal regulations alone wouldn't now comprise more than 200 volumes occupying about 20 feet of shelf space (versus none a century ago), and the Federal debt alone wouldn't now equal almost 110% of the nation's gross domestic product (versus close to none a century ago).

Creating coalitions, making alliances, passing lots of legislation, and enjoying the leadership's perks (i.e., for Brooks the ideal behavior of normal Congressmen) have, in other words, been the rule which has already ruined the Republic and will soon enough complete its destruction unless the "Tea Party types" whom both Brooks and Shields so scorn can manage in time to create a substantive political opposition which, in fact, returns the Republic to something like at least a genuine two-party state. It's not only time to, in Brooks' words, "stop things." Indeed, it's time to reverse things. And who -- other than Brooks, Shields, and their ilk --would believe legislation reversing the unconstitutional governance which has created a collectivist state is neither legislation per se nor the prerogative of normal congressmen in a representative Republic?

Does "the rise of Ted Cruz-ism" (Brooks' phrase for "the Tea Party types") really mean "to take over the Republican Party" as Brooks bemoans? We'd better hope so if we aspire ever again to become anything like free men with free markets in a representative Republic constitutionally governed.