Anarchy reigns in GOP House

Nowadays when President Obama is negotiating with Speaker Boehner the process is a sham, because Boehner can't speak for his own caucus.  He is not a real leader.  There has been a complete breakdown in the GOP House.  Each Congressman thinks he's the leader and only he represents the conscience of the Republican Party.

Writes Chait [emphasis mine]:

The rational way to view these events is that Republicans have marginalized themselves. But the hard-liners see it differently. In their minds, every bill that passes is a betrayal by their leaders. They know that letting Democrats carry bills through the House has been the leadership’s desperate recourse to avoid total chaos, and since chaos is their leverage, they are now working feverishly to seal off that escape route. This year, an increasing proportion of conservative media is given over to conservative activists’ extracting pledges from Republican leaders not to negotiate with Democrats. In the wake of the tax-cut deal, Republican leaders in both houses had to pledge that they would not engage in any—to quote the ubiquitous buzzword—“backroom deals.” Since all deals get made in back rooms (there is no such thing as a front room, and leaders in Western cultures like the United States habitually transact their business in rooms), this means no negotiation at all.

As usual, we can thank talk radio and the Tea Parties for this sad turn of events: these are two most "active" and "vocal" conservative groups -- you might argue they are just two tin cans connected by the same string -- who also, unfortunately, take no responsibility for their words, and could care less if the country falls over a cliff, so long as their personal wealth is secured.  In the case of talk radio jocks, the closer our country comes to the abyss, the angrier people get, the higher their ratings and book sales.  Our elected representatives find themselves hostages to these zero-responsibility loudmouths and malcontents; or, they are newly-elected rep's born of the zero-responsibility Tea Parties.  These extremists would burn our government down to the ground if they got their way.

Anarchists of the House

By Jonathan Chait

July 21, 2013 | New York Magazine

URL: http://nymag.com/news/features/republican-congress-2013-7/

Rosenberg: Political 'moderation' is killing us

Rosenberg succinctly explains the destructive and yet politically successful behavior of today's Congressional Republicans:

If unreasonable positions ensure that the other side gets equal blame in the centrist's scorekeeping and resulting media coverage, then they are inherently "can't lose" positions. This provides a basic floor which biases the entire process against being reasonable.

If some sort of action is eventually necessary (as it is with budget issues, and most other governmental questions as well), then the unreasonable side - which by definition cares less (perhaps not at all) about real-world consequences - has an increasing advantage the longer that the issue remains unresolved, thus further motivating them to remain unreasonable. If they start at 50 percent (equal blame), things only get better for them over time, as the blame burden remains constant, but the cost pressure to do something rises much more accurately on the reasonable side.

In the process, argues Rosenberg, politically viable but unworkable political proposals get conflated with politically "serious," i.e. reasonable, ideas -- first among the MSM and with Washington elite, then among the wider public:

So why is the discussion dominated by a non-solution while a real solution can't even be discussed? It's because the "politically viable" sense of serious totally dominates over the "pragmatically effective" sense of the word, and because what is politically viable is circularly defined: extremist Republican non-solutions are politically viable because Republicans adamantly insist that they are, no matter how laughable they may be - and centrist bipartisan ideologues routinely and reliably endorse their false claims as matters of fact when they do so. The fact that they aren't even remotely serious, in the problem-solving sense, never even enters the picture.

And here Rosenberg sounds almost like Rush Limbaugh, who rejects bi-partisanship as an inherent political virtue:

Problem-solving and argument-winning have become two entirely antagonistic activities, and "moderate" "centrist" "bipartisanship" has become the creation of such profound confusion that the voting public won't catch on until it's far, far too late.

Today's Republicans are wrong and unreasonable. Any "middle ground" between their ideas -- the Paul Ryan budget, for example -- and reasonable progressive ideas is still wrong.  We cannot afford to call "less wrong" a job well done. We have big problems and we must be right!

The US on suicide watch: Death by 'moderation'

By Paul Rosenberg

March 22, 2013 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/2013320184843513125.html