The government shutdown has made it abundantly obvious that the anti-conservative news media and the anti-conservative Republican establishment have joined together to the point where it’s almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. Some might say they merge every day on the set of “Morning Joe.”

The media have designated as Public Enemy Number One a recalcitrant bloc of Tea Party stalwarts who have declared their intention to stop Barack Obama’s statist juggernaut from imposing the Obamacare monstrosity, running up trillion-dollar deficits year after year, and in so doing destroying the private sector. Amazingly, the same wailing and gnashing of teeth has come from the liberal Republicans.