Here's something you don't see very often. An actual liberal on one of our Sunday bobble head shows having the opportunity to call out the AstroTurf "tea party" for being exactly what it is, a lobby funded by billionaires.
Katrina vanden Heuvel did just that on ABC's This Week, but as always, any liberals allowed on that show are always outnumbered four or five to one as was the case here.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Katrina, let me begin with you on this, what happened in the House this week. John Boehner allowing a clean debt limit to go through, clearly exactly what the president wanted, but probably shrewd for Boehner, too. It clears the decks in a year where he thinks his party can pick up a lot of seats in November.
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, EDITOR, "THE NATION": Well, the failure of the shutdown, I think, concentrated the mind. And the hostage takers have left the scene briefly. I mean we have seen manufactured crises by a party which has eroded business confidence, hurt the economy, hurt families.
And I think as 2014 approaches, the Republican Party decided they needed to pull up their bootstraps and get in place to pose any real challenge.
With Ted Cruz, though, you have to -- you know, he is a anti-establishment figure. But let's remember, when we take anti-establishment, that Tea Party is a corporate-hugging, well-funded lobby. And you saw in Ted Cruz the possibility for our country moving forward is that the delusional is no longer marginal when you look at Cruz, but for the moment, he's been marginalized.
So I think we need to refocus. The real conversation in this country should be creating jobs and investing in this country, not manufactured crises.
Which was followed by Peggy Noonan and Jonathan Karl pretending they hadn't heard a word she just said.