Thucydides, the Shutdown, and the Tea Party

William Galston writes in the Journal,

Tea-party Republicans, who are driving the GOP strategy, seem to view the conflict as a replay of the Peloponnesian War which started, argued Thucydides, because Spartans thought they had to act against the rising power of Athens before it was too late.

I wonder, is this the first and only time a columnist will attribute to the Tea Party such profound historical literacy? Of course, as a student of the great Donald Kagan, I feel compelled to point out that Thucydides may have oversimplified quite a bit.