Is the Senate trying to re-ignite the Cold War?

As he and his daughters bicycle around the summer playground of the Northeastern elite, Martha's Vineyard, President Obama is steadily bleeding away both the support of the nation and that of his most loyal constituency.

Last week's Republican debate at Ames, Iowa, and the straw poll Saturday did more than sort out the Republican field for 2012.

"You've damaged your own race," said Mayor Michael Nutter to the black youths of Philadelphia whose flash mobs have been beating and robbing shoppers in the fashionable district of downtown.

The decision by Standard & Poor's to strip the United States of its AAA credit rating, for the first time, has triggered a barrage of catcalls against the umpire from the press box and Obama-ites.

Mocked by The Wall Street Journal and Sen. John McCain as the little people of the "Lord of the Rings" books, the Tea Party "Hobbits" are indeed returning to Middle Earth -- to nail the coonskin to the wall.

Thanks to Tea Party fanatics, we are told, America just lost a historic opportunity to deal with her national debt.

"Like a fire bell in the night," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1820, "this momentous question ... awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union."

They were called "terrorists," "fanatics" and "unpatriotic."

Though President Obama has run rings about the Republican Party in the debt-ceiling debate, that party can yet emerge victorious, if it will stick to its guns.