Lost in the 21st Century

There is a lot of press about the Government shutdown brought upon us by the out of control Tea Party Loonies in Congress.  However, this is the best single write up I have seen….

This excellent article, by Noam Scheiber in the “New Republic”, summarizes where we are and how we got there with the Government shutdown- and just how desperate the GOP is becoming to find a way to end it.

It also very well points out the fractures in the GOP between the few pragmatic Republicans left in Congress and the Tea Party that, protected by heavily gerrymandered districts, is running rampantly crazy in Washington.

The best thing to come out of this is that the GOP Establishment has seen that they have created a monster with the Tea Party and that they are going to have to deal with it- or let it destroy the GOP.

I’m fine, either way….

Here is an excerpt from and a link to the full article.  It’s fascinating reading….

The problem for the GOP is that, as insulated as the House jihadis are from national trends, Senate Republicans and House pragmatists emphatically are not. When the approval rating for Republicans drops nationally, these people are badly exposed. They begin to fear for their jobs. They become desperate to cut a deal—any deal—that will end their political pain. And once they do—once there is a deal that a large chunk of Republicans either explicitly sign onto or tacitly endorse—then it is game over for the House. There is simply no House Republican leader who can resist a bill that many if not most Republicans want to see pass, a bill that has passed the Senate, and to which the only alternative is the complete annihilation of both the Republican Party and the global economy.

…

As we enter the home stretch, the dynamic is only reinforcing itself. The Tea Partiers have become steadily more delusional, reminding the pragmatists how insane it was to lock arms with them in the first place. “When I was home, I talked with people in our office that called in, I don’t get the sense that 70 percent [of people blame us],” House conservative Jim Jordan told Politico last week. (Good point!) On Sunday, the loonies in the House seized on a report that a mob of patriots overran the World War II Memorial and reclaimed it for … well, for whom isn’t entirely clear. But the loons in the House promptly labeled it a “game changer,” according to National Review’s Robert Costa. To them, it was the latest sign that the country sees things their way.

The pragmatists are, in turn, only becoming more anxious. Costa reports that aides to Mitch McConnell now worry they’ll have to make concessions on the sequester just to end the current crisis, whereas they’d previously assumed they could leave the sequester in place and trade it for entitlement cuts in a future grand bargain.

What Costa doesn’t discuss is the Republican leadership’s incentives, which is the final, poetic wrinkle in all of this. McConnell and Boehner, in addition to understanding how badly the Tea Partiers have hurt their party, have yet another reason to sue for peace. McConnell is facing a Tea Party primary challenge in his re-election campaign. Boehner has been repeatedly embarrassed by the Tea Partiers in his caucus, who have actively sabotaged his leadership (egged on/manipulated by Texas Senator Ted Cruz). Both men know their side has lost. Both men also know their party’s fanatics are to blame. Do you think they don’t want to see the Tea Party humiliated before all is said and done? Do you think they might want to see the Tea Partiers stuck with all the blame?

At the very least, it’s hard to believe they’ll fight too hard against any deal that accomplishes those goals. As I say, those intra-party rifts are a bummer.

via Shutdown 2013: The Deal that will end it | New Republic.