waPO: Recitation of Constitution set in House renews debate over Founders' intentions

"The document's genius, according to many scholars, is its often purposeful ambiguity - what Akhil Reed Amar, a Yale law professor and author of "America's Constitution: A Biography," called the Founders' ingenious establishment of a "common vocabulary for disagreement."

But some Democrats and constitutional scholars said the tea party had an atemporal view of the document that ignored the monumental changes of the Civil War, the New Deal and the Civil Rights era.

Ackerman said the events of the constitutional convention showed that the Constitution resulted from a "pro-tax rebellion" on the part of Federalists who thought the Articles of Confederation lacked enough power to raise taxes to pay the nation's considerable war debts.

Nadler agreed. "A lot of the tea party people, I wonder how many of them have read the Constitution," Nadler said. "A lot of them, they seem to think the Constitution is the Articles of Confederation."



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/04/AR2011010404652.html

what they intended is not sacrosanct.

and does not contain the words "deficit" or "budget" - or their equivalents.

by Jill Lepore

I've just started reading this, and so far it is very good. Lepore makes the case that, while politicians, political movements, and public figures from both sides of the aisle have commonly corralled the Founders and The Revolution in support of their issues, the Tea Party movement is especially ignorant of the history to which they lay claim.

So far an excellent read, and apropos of the OP, I think.