But the grassroots saw right through this gimmick. On Tuesday, speaker after speaker denounced the plan as sneaky and spineless. They’d seen the House vote 40-odd times to repeal Obamacare in one way or another, symbolic votes that went nowhere, aimed only at placating the rubes while Obamacare sailed on its merry way. They’d had enough of the “ruling elite,” Martin said, with its “games, showmanship, shenanigans ... to pull the wool over our eyes.”

A sweaty Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, gesturing toward the House, announced, “We’ve got some problems in the building behind you. We’ve got some folks that say they’re opposed to Obamacare, but they’ve just announced a strategy to make absolutely certain that the U.S. House will not defund Obamacare.” Boooo. “The speaker and the majority leader have just announced a strategy in which there’ll be another vote that doesn’t count, so on October 1, Obamacare will be funded.” Boooo. The Tea Party Industrial Complex came out against the "trick" bill. By midday Wednesday, the Cantor proposal had been pulled and Thursday's votes canceled as Republican leaders went back to the drawing board.

HEY, GOP:

THE END IS NEAR!

FOR OBAMACARE

OR

YOU

YOUR CHOICE

It is not news, of course, that the raw zeal of the Tea Party has turned out to be a mixed blessing for the Republican Party since helping propel its candidates to victory in 2010. A movement essentially anti-authoritarian in nature, it has proved as eager to train its fire on GOP authority figures as those on the left, an indiscriminate fire hose of rage that soaks whoever stumbles into its path. Herman Cain -- remember him? -- exhorted the crowd, “Anybody who said the Tea Party has died, they have lied, because the Tea Party is alive and well.” The crowd on Tuesday was not the Tea Party of yore, when Glenn Beck -- remember him? -- packed hundreds of thousands onto the Mall. And yet it still had the power to stop the speaker of the House of Representatives in his tracks.

I stopped to chat with Judy and Francis Kelly, a nice couple in their 60s from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, who’d come on a bus with a bunch of other Pittsburgh-area activists in matching red-white-and-blue name tags. Judy, a retired bank teller who considers herself “right of center,” actually saw some virtues in the Affordable Care Act. She was glad it would stop insurers from discriminating against preexisting conditions, and thought it was good for young people to get to stay on their parents’ insurance longer, and was glad it didn’t cover abortions. But the rest of it -- the government forcing people to buy health insurance -- went too far.

Francis, a sales engineer, had no patience for the squishy Republican politicians not on board the defunding bandwagon. “If they don’t support defunding, people like ourselves are going to do everything they can to see that they are defeated,” he said. “They don’t represent us. We’re looking for people who have enough backbone to stand up and do what’s right for the American people.”

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