Tom McClintock represented a major part of Ventura County in various roles from 1982 to 2008. I don't think anybody would describe him as wild or crazy. In fact, most people say the opposite. The Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters wrote that McClintock has "consistently been one of the very few legislators who has been right about what California is experiencing." The Wall Street Journal said he was "about the only man in California who has consistently projected correctly the magnitude of the budget crises of the 1990s." The OC Register noted he's "consistently been among the most accurate forecasters of the effects of state tax and spending policies." The Washington Post calls him, "one of California's most prominent conservative politicians since the 1980s."

He "graduated", so to speak, from the minor leagues of budget messes of Sacramento to the major leagues of national debt crises when he was elected to Congress in 2008. Not one to compromise on his conservative principles, McClintock--a Tea Party leader--fit right in with the Republican wave that swept into Congress in 2010.

With many freshmen Congressmen last year, Rep. McClintock voted against raising the debt limit, which he called, "the biggest explosion of debt in American history."

In an editorial called, "No experience necessary to write U.S. laws," the Star implied that such congressmen are "confrontational, hyperpartisan zealots who don't feel they have to learn anything because they know with total certitude what they know" and they "came close to driving the national into technical default" as "we revert to a nation of dirt roads."

Since McClintock is a leading figure of those "zealots" (The Hill refers to him as a "leader of GOP budget hawks"), agrees with them ideologically and votes with them, then he must be just as guilty as those Republicans the Star editorialized against.

He too, must be a hyperpartisan zealot who doesn't feel he has to learn anything--he who was reelected multiple times by the same people who are currently serviced by the Ventura County Star. He who is noted by multiple major publications as being a public budget expert. He who voted the same way Americans wanted their congressmen to vote by a 2-to-1 margin.

And if he's granted an exception--i.e. ok fine, they're all crazy but Tom McClintock--then one has to wonder that maybe freshmen GOP congressmen know more than we give them credit for if McClintock is one of their leaders and they vote the same as him and think the way he does.

It could just be--just maybe--that they (along with many other experts that follow the government debt problem) see it as a huge problem and are trying their best to slam the brakes on overspending before it's too late, even if it means getting called less-than-flattering names by respected publications.