How Much Do Tea-Baggers Scare Mainstream Republicans? (With Update)

This much:

Twenty-seven Republican senators voted with Democrats on Oct. 16 to lift the debt ceiling and avert a catastrophic default. And each one of those 27 senators voted Tuesday to "disapprove" of their own votes.

The vote Tuesday was a symbolic "resolution to disapprove" of the debt limit hike. It was mandated by the deal thanks to a last-minute provision inserted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The motion failed 45-54 because all Democrats opposed it.

Even if it passed Congress, it wouldn't have stopped the debt limit hike because President Obama could veto the measure. The purpose was to give these senators the chance to say they disapprove of a deal they voted for.

Such bravery.

UPDATE:  Stephen Colbert has more on this:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

An Elegant Argument In Support Of Raising The Minimum Wage

All I can say about this Bill Maher New Rule is Amen:



The best part:

"This is the question the Right has to answer. Do you want smaller government with less handouts or do you want do you want a low minimum wage—because you cannot have both. If Colonel Sanders isn’t going to pay the lady behind the counter enough to live on, then Uncle Sam has to. And I for one am getting a little tired of helping highly profitable companies pay their workers."

Now This Is How You Deal With A Tea Bagger (Updated)

This is the must-see video of the day, and it needs a bit of a set-up:

Bagger Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), during this morning's House hearings on the implementation of Obamacare, accused the programmers and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid of breaking HIPAA privacy laws. Rep. Frank Pallone (D. NJ), however, called Bagger Barton on his bullshit:



The Baggers think they've cornered the market on rage in this country, so it is nice to see a Democrat in the House get angry and take the fight to these America-hating bastards.

I'm mad as hell that these tea-bagging motherfuckers intentionally tried to bring down my country's economy, and something tells me that Congressman Pallone wasn't all that happy about it either.

UPDATE:  The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi not only conducts one of the funniest interviews of all time, but he gets a Republican to admit he's a racist:

Bonus Quote of the Week

"We've seen this sad story too many times: African-American males without role models go onto become president and give everyone healthcare.  *** One must ask, how was he able to yank such an insightful diagnosis so smoothly from his ass?"

- Stephen Colbert, responding to Fox News' resident psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow, who "diagnosed" President Obama with a "victim mentality" that can be traced back to his father's abandonment.

Follow The Money

One of the more interesting things to watch as the GOP Civil War unfolds is how Big Business will react to it.  If the Baggers press for another government shutdown and once again threaten to bring down our economy on purpose, then it looks like the Democrats are ready to take advantage:

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is keeping awfully busy. In addition to serving his constituents, raising money, and recruiting candidate, the New York Democrat has begun reaching out to over 1,000 business leaders, urging them to reconsider their relationships with the Republican Party.

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that the DCCC sees an opportunity to exploit divisions within the Republican coalition. With Wall Street and corporate leaders apparently annoyed by their lack of influence in Republican circles, coupled with the rise of Tea Party dominance among GOP lawmakers, Democratic leaders are reminding the business community that it was Dems who were doing what’s right for the economy, while it’s Republicans who shut down the government and threatened a sovereign debt crisis.

I'm also interested in whether the Baggers are going to get much funding from here on out. Indeed, as reported by BuzzFeed, the tea party group FreedomWorks "has fallen into dire financial straits, and was forced to take out a $1 million line of credit earlier this year."

Quote of the Week

What makes the Tea Party dangerous is its members’ willful disregard for the most basic tenets of American democracy. They do not believe in the legitimacy of our president. They do not believe in the legitimacy of decisions handed down by our Supreme Court. Unlike President Obama, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, or a host of other Democratic and Republican lawmakers who grasp the basic reality of politics, they have never, not once shown a willingness to compromise on anything. Merely uttering the word is enough to draw a primary challenge.

- Jon Favreau, former chief speechwriter for President Obama.

That pretty much sums it up.  In fact, if you listen to a moderate average normal non-batshit Republican talk these days, he sounds pretty much like a Bagger when it comes to policy. For example, every Republican in Congress -- Tea-Bagger or not --  hates ObamaCare so much that they never stop talking about their hatred for it.  The disagreement in the Party is over what to do about it.

I think Chuck Todd said the other day that the Tea People are not fighting with the rest of the GOP over policy -- they're fighting over tactics.  That's putting it mildly, given that one radical GOP faction is willing to bring down the American economy over the Health Care Act while the rest of the Party is not.

Charlie Cook's GOP Diagnosis

This sounds about right:

The combination of redistricting; population-sorting; and media-viewing, listening, and reading habits has created ideological and partisan culs-de-sac and incestuous thinking that are causing astonishing miscalculations on hugely consequential matters.

I consulted a psychiatrist and a psychologist on this question. Both said there is no formal term for the behavior some Republicans are exhibiting, but one described the groupthink as “hysterical delusional affirmation,” and the other named it “delusional synergy.” One said, “It entails suspension of logical intellectual processes with a selective consideration of only confirmatory input. Paranoid people typically experience ideas of influence and control where they believe that they see things that others cannot. This process is often propelled by delusions of grandeur, quite often messianic in nature.”

We've seen all this before, of course.  Cook concludes that "[w]hen hatred turns into obsession, it spawns some pretty erratic and destructive behavior."

I couldn't agree more. As I wrote last week:  "[T]he country is now witnessing what happens when a major political party lets hatred for the President drive its agenda."  And the funny part about all this is that the more Obama wins, the more Republicans hate him and the more delusional they become. 

This latest Democratic victory must have put the Baggers over the top as far as their hatred for Obama is concerned, given how thoroughly he crushed them.  Can't wait to see how they respond.

Obama Accepts Republican Surrender As GOP Civil War Escalates

Earlier this morning, President Barack Obama signed a bill increasing the debt ceiling and ending the partial government shutdown, thus bringing to a close the Republican-manufactured crisis and handing the GOP a crushing defeat.

The bill passed the House Wednesday evening on a 285-144 vote -- all House Democrats voted in favor of the bill and were joined by 87 Republicans. The Senate earlier voted 81-18 for the bill.

Meanwhile, the GOP Civil War continues to heat up. There is a whole lot of finger-pointing going on right now within the Party. Grover Norquist didn't have any good things to say about Ted Cruz and the rest of the ObamaCare defunders. Tea-Bagger Raul Labrador (R-ID) reacted to the GOP defeat by threatening other Republicans:

"I'm more upset with my Republican conference, to be honest with you. It's been Republicans here who apparently always want to fight, but they want to fight the next fight, that have given Speaker Boehner the inability to be successful in this fight. *** So if anybody should be kicked out, it's probably those Republicans... who are unwilling to keep the promises they made to the American people. Those are the people who should be looking behind their back."

Fun times ahead. Stay tuned.

Remember: Republicans Took Us To The Brink Because They Opposed Their Own Idea

This is pathetic:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he was "proud" of Boehner's handling of the crisis. Then within moments he pleaded with Democrats to bail out the GOP, which he admitted has "screwed up" and "really did go too far" in the shutdown and debt limit standoffs.

"We won't be the last political party to overplay our hand," he said. "It might happen one day on the Democratic side. And if it did, would Republicans, for the good of the country, kinda give a little? We really did go too far. We screwed up. But their response is making things worse, not better."

Christ, who out there thinks the GOP would ease up on the Democrats if the situation was reversed? I just hope the Democrats don't forget all the shit the Republicans pulled over the last few years leading up to this moment.   

The GOP has taken this country to the brink of default over the Individual Health Care Mandate, an idea the GOP actually once supported.  This fact is finally starting to get some ink in the mainstream press.  This is from a Los Angeles Times Op/Ed by Jane Mansbridge:

Fundamentally — and infuriatingly for the Democratic base — Obamacare is inherently a compromise because it is a health insurance reform law rather than an overhaul of the structure of our nation's healthcare system. ***  Instead of a single-payer system or even a public option for those who chose it, Democrats went along with the Obama compromise of adopting RomneyCare, the old Republican plan signed into law by Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts.

I have been critical of the GOP for its epic flip-flop on the Individual Mandate. A chronic flip-flopper might respond that a person -- or even a political party -- should have the right to change his, her, or its mind about things.  But this whole notion of the GOP bringing us to the brink over the implementation of an idea it once supported?  There's just no excuse for that kind of ridiculous behavior. 

I think Chief Justice Roberts voted to uphold ObamaCare because he didn't feel like playing the same bullshit game that the rest of the GOP was playing -- he didn't want to pretend that ObamaCare was the most evil form of socialism ever enacted when he knew it was a GOP idea to begin with and one that Republicans supported all the way up to 2008, when they stopped supporting it for some reason.

Quote of the Week

“Anybody who would vote for that in the House as Republican would virtually guarantee a primary challenger.”

- Tea-Bagger Congressman Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, on the bipartisan deal currently being worked on in the Senate to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown.

What I like about this quote is that it demonstrates exactly why we are in this crisis right now, i.e., why a small group of radicals has been able to control the House.  In fact, the "you get primaried if you don't go along with us" threat used to be an unstated one.  The fact that Bagger Huelskamp now feels compelled to vocalize the threat tells me that the tide might be changing in the House and we may yet get out of this crisis with only moderate damage to our economy.  It also tells me that the GOP Civil War is really starting to heat up.

The situation does seem to be deteriorating for House Republicans.  Boehner's plan was apparently to reject the Senate compromise, vote on a House bill that would require ObamaCare concessions on the part of the Democrats, and then skip town before the Senate could send anything back.  But it looks like that plan is tanking in the House.

So it seems to me that it all comes down to whether Boehner submits the Senate Compromise bill to an up-or-down vote in the House.  If he does, the crisis is probably over because all Democrats and enough Republicans will vote for it .  If he does not, then we will default.

How Could Anyone Be Worse Than Boehner? (With Update)

One thing I noticed over the weekend while watching Meet the Press and other political shows is the emergence of the idea that Democrats must concede on the Debt Limit/Government Shutdown fight because taking a hard line could compromise John Boehner's position as Speaker of the House. For example, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said yesterday:  "[A]fter all this mess is over, do we really want to compromise John Boehner as leader of the House?  I don't think so."  The GOP's apparent argument is that if you think Boehner has been difficult to negotiate with, his replacement would be far worse.

Worse?  How exactly? The 113th United States Congress hasn't passed any major legislation this year.  Although that is undoubtedly good news for the Tea Baggers -- given their hatred for law and government America-- it is difficult to fathom how it could be any worse for the Democrats if the current Speaker was replaced.  Indeed, even if the baggiest of the Baggers ended up with the speakership, then at least the most ineffective middleman in history -- i.e., John Boehner -- would be removed from the equation and the Democrats could then deal directly with the radical right-wing extremists who actually run the House.

What is that you say?  An extremist Speaker would allow the country to default on its debts whereas Boehner would not? Well, that is yet to be seen.  I think it is more likely than not that Boehner will allow the country to default on its debts.  I think this way because even if Democrats and Republicans in the Senate were able to reach some sort of compromise in the next day or two, there is no way in hell that the Bagger-controlled House would pass it,  How do I know this?  Here's how:

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) *** thought she too had come up with a solution: Congress would reopen the government for six months and raise the debt limit for a year. Democrats would have to accept sequestration levels and throw in a two-year delay of the medical-device tax in the Affordable Care Act, and in exchange, Republicans would concede nothing. Yesterday, Democrats rejected this as wholly unacceptable. . . .

And as a practical matter, it doesn't much matter that Dems didn't like it, since House Republicans said they'd refuse to even vote on the Collins plan -- a plan in which Republicans give up nothing except temporary hold on some hostages -- even if the Senate approved it and even if House GOP leaders could tolerate it.

That's right -- the House would have rejected the Collins Plan even though it required the Democrats to make all the concessions and thus give in to the GOP's legislative terrorism.

So even if the Senate is close to a deal -- as has been reported this morning -- all that matters now is what the House will do, and I expect Boehner and the Baggers will reject whatever the Senate sends them.  The House will then send the Senate a bill that will increase the debt limit and reopen the government, but this bill will be full of poison pills -- e.g., repeal of ObamaCare, Social Security, and Medicare, along with Obama admitting in writing both that he was born in Kenya and that he is a Marxist/Fascist -- and the Senate will reject it.

So we are headed toward default.  I hope I am wrong on this, but I don't believe I am.  I think what will happen is that Boehner will allow the country to go past the October 17 default date -- just to make the radicals happy -- but then will be forced to pass a clear CR and debt ceiling increase with the help of House Democrats.  A tanking stock market will force Boehner's hand.

UPDATE:  This was long overdue:

Fox News correspondent Ed Henry walked out of a White House press briefing after being repeatedly ignored by spokesman Jay Carney on Friday.

Henry attempted to ask Carney a question twice, but Carney called on other people instead. After the first time, Henry could be seen shaking his head and muttering something to colleague Major Garrett. After the second time, Henry angrily got up and left the room. The briefing continued without him.

I've wondered for a long time why Fox News correspondents are ever called on during Obama press conferences and briefings, given that Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party.  It would be akin to FDR allowing Joseph Goebbels to ask him questions at a 1943 presser.

And no, I am not comparing Fox News and the Republicans to Nazi Germany -- the Nazis were an external threat to the security of America, whereas Fox News and the Bagger-led GOP are internal threats.  Completely different deal.

It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than This . . .

. . . unless you're a Republican -- then it literally doesn't get any worse than this new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll:

By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama – a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96. Just 24 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion about the GOP, and only 21 percent have a favorable view of the Tea Party, which are both at all-time lows in the history of poll.

But as awesome as all that is, my favorite part of the poll are the numbers with regard to ObamaCare, which had a very shaky rollout last week:

[T]he health-care law has become more popular since the shutdown began. Thirty-eight percent see the Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare”) as a good idea, versus 43 percent who see it as a bad idea – up from 31 percent good idea, 44 percent bad idea last month.

Think about that for a second: The Republicans said they staged this shutdown in an attempt to defund or delay ObamaCare, apparently thinking that the public would support them because the law is unpopular. Well, not only did this support fail to materialize for them, but the GOP is now even more unpopular than it was during Bill Clinton's PenisGate Scandal.

And -- this is the best part -- ObamaCare is more popular now than it was at the beginning of the shutdown, even though the rollout of the Health Care Law has been plagued with website problems.

Way to go, GOP.  Keep up the good work, and for God's Sake, please ignore what RINO John McCain is saying about all of this:

Suicide Caucus Or Not? (With Update)

Here is one Tea-Bagger who accepts his role as a lemming:

[Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga.] said Republicans were “absolutely” prepared to lose the House to extract concessions on the CR and the debt limit, and he said the White House is “missing the determination of the Republican Party.”

The Republicans are definitely having problems with their message right now.  So what is it -- are the Baggers on a suicide run or do they really believe -- as a lot of Republicans are now claiming -- that a default would be a minor thing?  Whatever it is, Steve Benen does not think that the Baggers are very good hostage takers:

Let's say the default deniers are right. They're not, but let's just say they are for the sake of conversation, and the consequences of the United States ignoring its financial obligations would be minor. If that's true, why should President Obama and congressional Democrats pay a steep ransom to let the hostage go?

In other words, Republican lawmakers are presenting Dems with the following message: "Meet our demands or we'll shoot the hostage. And by the way, even if we pull the trigger, the hostage will probably be fine." I'm not an expert in hostage crises, but there seems to be a problem here.

I think the Baggers are having a message problem because they want the economic chaos that will result from a default. Why do they want that?  Because they believe that history will blame President Blackenstein for it. 

But they can't come out and just say they want economic chaos. These folks are idiots, but they are smart enough to know that you shouldn't admit to intentionally trying to bring down the economy. Then you'd have to explain why you hate America so much. So instead they simply say that a default on our debt wouldn't be a big deal, even though they are quietly expecting that it will be. 

They clearly wanted to shut the government down.  Why else would they demand from the President the one thing they knew he couldn't give them, namely, the repeal of ObamaCare?  The Baggers made Obama an "offer" they knew he'd refuse.

Anyone who previously questioned whether the GOP would rather see the economy tank than let Obama achieve even a perceived victory should doubt no longer.  Mitch McConnell himself proclaimed several years ago the the GOP plan was to bring down Obama, and the country is now witnessing what happens when a major political party lets hatred for the President drive its agenda.

UPDATE:  Looks like the Kock Brothers just blinked:

In a letter to U.S senators dated Wednesday, Koch Industries denied ever advocating for a government shutdown as a way to force the defunding of Obamacare. The letter was in response to comments on the Senate floor Tuesday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in which he blamed Koch for the shutdown, which followed a conservative push to pressure Democrats into defunding or delaying Obamacare to keep the government open.

The Brain Dead Zone (With Update)

"I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets."

-- Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL), on breaching the debt ceiling.

Now I'm not posting merely to point out that this Yoho character is a piece of shit.  What I found a bit interesting -- in an unnerving way -- was that right after I read that quote, this scene from "The Dead Zone" popped into my head:



Let's face facts. A lot of the very same Baggers who are intentionally trying to crash our economy are also heavy-duty Bible beaters. You know the kind: they think that the Earth is 6000 years old and the End Times are just around the corner (e.g., Michele Bachmann) -- or worse yet, they believe the End Times are just around the corner and they feel they have a personal role to play in bringing them about.

We've seen that kind of crap before, but never for such high stakes or with such a high level of accompanying lunacy. Who could forget this oldie but a goodie from the Bush years:

Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president’s support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming. Many on the left, in turn, fear that such theology may influence decisions the administration makes toward Israel and the Middle East.

Anyway, has anybody considered the possibility that perhaps these Tea-Baggers who want to bring down our country are just, well . . . how do I say it --  religious nutcases who want to usher in the Era of the Anti-Christ?

UPDATE:  Right on cue:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) accused President Obama of arming al Qaeda militants in Syria and said it was evidence "we're in God's end times," The Hill reports.



Said Bachmann: "This happened and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists. Now what this says to me, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God's end times history."

My Apology to Ramesh Ponnuru

Over a year ago, I was critical of conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru for stating: “If Obama wins re-election, the Republican Party will react by moving right, not left.” I responded to Mr. Ponnuru by basically stating he was full of shit. I said: "How will the GOP move more to the right than they are now? Are they going to start wearing swastikas on their arms?"

Well, he was right and I was wrong, and I apologize for my error.

Quote(s) Of The Week

The Republican Party is like the corpse in Weekend at Bernie's and the Tea Party is like the two guys who put sunglasses and a party hat on it and drag it around.  The Republican who summarized it best this week -- he was all over the news -- was this Indiana Tea Party guy named Marlin Stutzman, who said “We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t even know what that is.”  Say what you will about a toddler throwing a tantrum in a grocery store -- at least he knows he wants Cocoa Puffs.

- Bill Maher.

Obama’s view, which I share, is that the debt ceiling fight is far more important not only than the specific policies on the table, or even the catastrophic economic consequences of a debt breach. It’s a fight to preserve the Constitutional order. ***

[T]he bigger problem here is that conservatives are not acknowledging the Democrats’ belief. It’s not a pose. They genuinely think, regardless of the merits of the ransom demand, they can’t give in, both for the national long-term interest and on moral principle. Conservatives are acting like the problem here is that they asked for a bit too much to begin with, and want to start haggling down the price. The price isn’t the issue. If the conservative goal is to create the illusion of winning something for the debt ceiling, then they’ll come back next time to win more, and Democrats can’t allow that.

- Jonathan Chait.

What Is The One Thing That Can End The Shutdown?

This:

A new Fox News poll finds that President Obama's overall job rating has improved 5 percentage points over last month: 45% approve now, up from 40% in September.

The radicals within the GOP are pushing this whole shutdown scheme because they hate government, but they hate Obama more and they won't be able to tolerate watching his approval numbers climb.

The GOP needs to accept the political truth of all this:  Obama isn't in a big hurry to end the shutdown. He can continually lob grenades into the GOP camp and all the GOP can do is feebly try to make the case that the Democrats are responsible for the shutdown, a notion only Fox News appears to be buying into.  The White House knows the longer this shutdown lasts, the better it is for Obama.  As a senior White House official said yesterday: "We are winning...It doesn't really matter to us" how long the shutdown lasts "because what matters is the end result."

Although I wouldn't have advised anyone in the Administration to make a comment like that, it does happen to be the truth.  The Democrats are standing strong right now, and the Republicans are beginning to attack each other.  Ted Cruz took a beating last Wednesday during a closed door meeting with fellow GOP senators:

[O]ne GOP senator after another pressed Cruz to offer a proposal to end the shutdown, according to Politico. The junior senator from Texas reportedly had no solution nor could he explain how he would defund the Affordable Care Act – an effort led by Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) that served as the impetus for the current shutdown.

“It was very evident to everyone in the room that Cruz doesn’t have a strategy – he never had a strategy, and could never answer a question about what the end-game was,” an unnamed senator told Politico. “I just wish the 35 House members that have bought the snake oil that was sold could witness what was witnessed today at lunch."

Needless to say, I am enjoying this whole shutdown story quite a bit. I'm sadddened that a lot of people are suffering because of it, but the GOP is going to take a big hit for causing it, which will be a good thing for the country in the long run.

And the absolute best part of all this? The Baggers who caused this mess are not going anywhere. A lot of them are gerrymandered in. Some of these idiots could go out and shoot a hundred people on live TV and they'd still win reelection in their very red-colored districts (they'd argue they were simply exercising their Second Amendment rights when they shot all those people, and their constituents would believe it).

It's as if a self-destruct mechanism was build into the GOP itself. Normally, if a small group of radicals was damaging the brand of a major political party, then the radicals would be purged from the party's ranks. But not in the bizarro world of the GOP -- the radicals are the ones purging the moderates from the party. I think Oregon Congressman Greg Walden said it best about a month ago when he was asked why the GOP was flirting with shutting down the government: “We have to do this because of the Tea Party. If we don’t, these guys are going to get primaried and they are going to lose their primary.”

So there you have it.  The Baggers are here to stay and they will destroy the Republican Party, unless someone can convince the Koch Brothers and other rich conservatives to stop funding them. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

Republicans Blamed For Shutdown (With Update)

Well, so much for the Republican dream that Obama and the Democrats will be blamed for the shutdown.  Here is a compilation of editorials from around the country regarding the shutdown, and the GOP is receiving near-universal blame for it, even by editorials boards who oppose ObamaCare.

I'm not surprised by this.  I remember the last time the GOP shut down the government.  They tried to blame the Democrats for it back then as well, but that didn't work.  However, I did write a couple days ago that I expected the shutdown to last only a few days, and one reason I thought it would be of short duration is because I knew the GOP would catch endless shit for it, even from folks who usually support the GOP.  But now I think this shutdown could last quite a long time.

During the last couple of days, I've been thinking a lot about an article I read after the 2012 Election. The article discussed how everyone in the Romney Camp was stunned that they lost the election.  One adviser actually said that Romney "was shellshocked" by his loss, Paul Ryan seemed "genuinely shocked," and Ryan's wife "was shaken and cried softly."  One senior Ronmey adviser even said: "We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory -- I don't think  there was one person who saw it coming."

Well, maybe there wasn't a person in the Romney campaign who saw it coming, but most everybody else outside of Fox News did. I was stunned at the time by the fact that Romney himself "couldn't see the writing on the wall," given that a businessman of his alleged caliber "would presumably want to get the straight scoop on where he stood with the electorate."

Bill Maher describes this GOP inability to see reality as "living in the bubble."  But I believe what we are witnessing here is in fact a form of shellshock which I think has a variety of causes -- e.g., the election and reelection of a Black president, the passage of Health Care Reform after 100 years of trying, a conservative Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the Health Care Reform law, gay people actually getting some rights, the Pope saying that atheists can go to Heaven, marijuana being legalized in two states, the winding down of two wars, the fact that the GOP base is dying off while the Democratic base is expanding.

I think all of these historic developments over the last few years have overloaded the GOP psyche.  It is just too much for most Republicans to process over such a short period of time, and that is why we are seeing the GOP acting out the way it is now.

I think a lot of the Republicans who actually campaigned on the promise of shutting down the government and who fully support allowing this country to default on its debts are taking these radical positions because they just don't give a shit anymore about this country and the people who populate it. The one thing they do know is that Obama would never agree to shutter the Affordable Care Act.  That's why they made the demand.  They wanted the government to shut down and they want the United States to default on its debts, even though most of them understand a default would cause more economic upheaval.

Bottom line: It's really hard to negotiate with crazy people who are not only willing to bring down the entire country, but apparently want to bring the country down in much the same way terrorists want to. Ironically, these same Republican terrorizers also routinely accuse liberals and progressives of hating America.

UPDATE:  Well, nice try folks:

The monuments in Washington, D.C. -- and particularly the World War II memorial -- have become a symbol for the right to decry the government shutdown, even labeling the National Park Service shutdown "shock troops" designed to toss veterans out at will as they approach the memorial.

On Tuesday, Rep. Steve Palazzo (R-MS) reportedly opened the barricade of the World War II Memorial to let a group of veterans in. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) helped by "distract(ing) a police officer" to sneak the veterans in, according to a reporter on the scene. Even outgoing tea partier Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) made an appearance.

"President Obama is so fixated on forcing Obamacare on the American people that he's even willing to deny World War II veterans the right to access the memorial they have earned through their heroic service," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said in a statement on Wednesday.

Republicans say President Barack Obama has been so obsessed with pushing a governmental shutdown that he's refusing to allow anyone into the national parks and monuments (even though the National Park Service said on Wednesday that veterans would be allowed to visit the World War II memorial).

You just can't make this shit up.  The whole thing reminds me of a crappy movie.  Get better writers next time, GOP.

Solid Fallows Piece on "False Equivalency"

This James Fallows piece from last Friday -- titled "Your False Equivalency Guide to the Days Ahead" -- is definitely worth a read.  Some of my favorite parts:

This time, the fight that matters is within the Republican party, and that fight is over whether compromise itself is legitimate.*** Outsiders to this struggle -- the president and his administration, Democratic legislators as a group, voters or "opinion leaders" outside the generally safe districts that elected the new House majority -- have essentially no leverage over the outcome. ***

As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a "standoff," a "showdown," a "failure of leadership," a sign of "partisan gridlock," or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism*** and an inability to see or describe what is going on.***

This isn't "gridlock." It is a ferocious struggle within one party, between its traditionalists and its radical factions, with results that unfortunately can harm all the rest of us -- and, should there be a debt default, could harm the rest of the world too.

This "failure of journalism" to which Fallows refers has really annoyed me over the years.  The GOP has done such a number on the mainstream press that some journalists are afraid to tell the truth, namely, that Republicans are not only responsible for gridlock in Washington, but they have admitted their responsibility and actually brag about it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  the problem is that the Mainstream Press has no interest in reporting what may be the most underreported story in recent political history, namely, the radicalization of the Republican Party over the last few years.  A lot of folks in the Press are not reporting this important story because they are too scared to report it, but it really is The Big Story right now because the radicalized elements within the GOP are basically calling the shots right now and are killing the Republican Party in the process.

When was the last time a major political party went belly up in this country? Well, we are seeing this happen right now, and I find it hilarious that one of the great political stories of our time is going unreported because journalists are so afraid of the GOP that they are unable to notice the stench of death beginning to emanate from that Party.

By the way -- as usual, Jon Stewart nails it.