Our Country's GOP Problem

Amy Davidson:

Here is what passes for logic and optimism in Washington: the current theory is that Republicans will be more willing to strike a deal after we go off the cliff, because one of the big elements of the plummet is an increase in taxes for everyone. At that point, the thinking goes, they wouldn’t technically be agreeing to a tax increase on the top two per cent of earners—Obama’s offer—but rather lowering them for the rest. Never mind that all sorts of other things happen at midnight on December 31st—tax-related things, like reductions in the earned-income tax credit, as well as the automatic spending cuts that come with sequestration and miscellaneous items like an end to many unemployment benefits, disorder in the financial markets, and maybe, as a special bonus, a credit downgrade. We’re all expected to go over the cliff so that the Republicans can play a mind game. But that is the Republican Party that we are dealing with—one more taken up by its internal divisions than by the business of the country. Nate Silver, in the Times, has a depressing look at the disappearance of the swing district, and the rise of ones that are steadily Republican or Democratic. What is crucial, as Silver points out, is that this doesn’t translate into safe seats for incumbents; it just turns the primaries into death matches. On the Republican side, in particular, these are increasingly governed by ideological tests.

Rural and, to the extent they are necessary to comprise enough people to make a difference, suburban folks are driving the idiotic ideological agenda of this terrible excuse for a governing alternative to the Democrats. When will enough sane people leave the nuts behind and actually work to improve our society?