Hey, remember that tax on “the rich” that Obama, with the help of the more “pragmatic” Republicans, pushed through Congress? Remember how it was a necessary measure to insure that fat cats paid their fair share so that America could cut its deficit and trim its debt? And remember how nobody who was at all serious believed for a second it was anything more than punitive class warfare — albeit class warfare that so terrified the GOP that they convinced themselves how politically the smart play was to vote to raise taxes rather than be forced to listen as the mainstream press excoriated them for their role in taking us over the dreaded “fiscal cliff”?

Well, guess what. All that new and crucial revenue collected to help us get our fiscal house in order — using a balanced approach of higher taxes and the promises of cuts to rates of spending which everyone with a lick of sense realizes will never materialize (unless it happens automatically through sequestration) — has already been spent, removed from the private sector and squandered by the government, who dished it out to cronies or watched it disappear into the great DC maw of waste, fraud, and abuse made manifest in the pork appended to the Hurricane Relief Bill.

Passed by the GOP-led House. Who, don’t blame them, they’re but 1/2 of 1/3 of the government, so what the hell can they do? Also, shut up, Hobbits.

And yet debt continues to grow.

Meanwhile the GOP, when it isn’t busy holding “conservative” summits on how best to curb conservatism in order to strengthen the Party, is looking around for the next hill not to die on — the last one being the agreement to give the President a “suspension” of the debt limit, the practical effect of which is that had not the money raised through an increased tax burden already been spent it most certainly would be spent here, along with billions in additional money we don’t have but which can now be spent — and is likely to come in at somewhere near 7 to 8x the amount of the revenue collected by weakening the private sector, punishing job producers, and further depressing and already depressed economy by way of higher taxes.

Is it time yet, folks? Time, finally, to set up a Third Party for national elections that, when appropriate, caucuses with the GOP, so that the Republican establishment can have their “moderates” in the states where we’re told only moderate Republicans can win, but we can have constitutionalists in states where we’re able to peel off traditional Democrats nervous about the New Left trajectory of their party by appealing to a liberty agenda and by articulating classical liberal principles while rejecting and belittling attempts by the left to demonize us as racists, homophobes, xenophobes, misogynists, and dangerous future terrorists?

Most of our current crop of “conservative” leaders and GOP strategists don’t speak for conservatism at all. And until we extricate ourselves from the power of the Roves and Bushes and the McCains to dictate our potential representatives, we are servants to their plans and stratagems, when in truth, they should be representing our wishes.

We’re out in the cold as it is. What’s a little less hot air keeping us marginally comfortable in the overall scheme of things?