It is not often a soothsayer of political predictions has the satisfaction of watching his musings unfurl just the way he envisaged - especially when it is the herald of good tidings. Consequently, I am feeling as smug and self-satisfied as the Cheshire Cat.
The Tea Party in its many varied fantastical manifestations, together with those more reasonable Republicans who went-along-to-get-along are finding the road ahead increasingly more bumpy than they did a year ago. Although this may be in part due to their actual objection to sustaining the government's ability to maintain roads, the unending tea Party circus has traveled oh-so-much further.
Since the Tea Party representatives were ushered into power on a wave of angry frustration, they have succeeded in economically damaging the country in a way that must make the diminished leadership of Al Qaeda green with envy.
Not even a mastermind criminal like Dr. Evil could possibly have envisioned a plan so dastardly: To effect a downgrading of the US credit-rating by pushing the country to the edge of default, the lip of financial destruction. How brilliant is that? Didn't the Republicans try something like this before? Did it work? Don't these folks read recent history?
This body slam against the economic stability to the US has not exactly endeared themselves to the citizenry as a whole, and it is the gift that continues to give.
Any Republican contestants that wish to vie for president have to run a gauntlet of fantastical litmus tests - issues dear to the Tea Party, a dark fantasy land of mean-spirited and base issues that boggles the mind of any sane individual.
The candidates must be faithful to the Tea Party cause to pass muster, and those who make it find themselves in a macabre clown-show of the spirit and mind, where the more bizarre your public statements, the greater the applause from a large crowd of increasingly statistically insignificant faithful.
Juxtapose this to the calm reflective President Obama, and what you are looking at is four more years.
This time around, the Republicans shot from the hip and missed; an over-preponderance of half-baked loonies under a fraying umbrella, a recipe almost guaranteed to bring the Democrats screaming back with a resounding majority.
...But THIS time the Democrats will have to perform, and if they don't produce results, the fledgling Wall Street Protest might possibly grow into something quite out of their control, an entity that I certainly do not care to make predictions about.