Stop pretending there's a political center

Here we have two op-eds basically saying the same thing. Wrote Weiler:

The dynamics of GOP politics are clear -- the biggest threat to state legislators, generally drawn as they are into solidly red districts, is from yet more right-wing politicians. There is almost no incentive to run toward the center and every reason to push farther to the right. 

And here's Cohen:

Quite simply, Republicans are being destroyed by the rightwing monster they created.

Although, once upon a time, the divide in the GOP was between moderates and conservatives; today, the intra-party cleavage is between the Republican establishment and the lunatic fringe. And the fringe is not so fringe-y.

Despite the rightward radicalization of the GOP, writes Weiler,

... political media in general still cling to the preposterous belief that the parties are equidistant from some notional "center" in American political life. But that premise -- symmetrical polarization -- is simply and flatly wrong.

And here's the upshot, according to Cohen:

The result of all this is more dysfunction, more budgetary shutdowns and more political black eyes for a Republican party unable to reason with its most ideologically fervent followers. None of this should really be unexpected. If you're going to tell radical conservatives that Obamacare is the worst thing to ever happen to America, is it really a surprise that those same extremists are not going to meekly nod when you tell them that it's now a fact of life? If you're going to tell voters that government debt is destroying the country, is it really a surprise when those voters demand that every step must be taken to reduce it?

Any hope that the defeat of Mitt Romney in November 2012 would begin to drain the GOP's fever swamp has gone by the wayside – and Republicans have no one to blame but themselves. In nurturing and radicalizing its extremist fringe – in pursuit of short-term gain – the Republican establishment created a political Frankenstein. Increasingly, however, it looks as though the monster's first victim is going to be them.

So let's stop pretending there is a political center in America, and that if only Democrats would give a little, and Republicans would give a little, we'd end up at some happy medium. Today's Democrats are early-1990s Republicans, let's face it, while today's GOP is a new radical-right party whose only internal debate is the extent to which a do-nothing husk of a federal government should protect white Christian identity, and intervene in other countries' business by military force.

Republicans' big problem with crazy

By Michael Cohen

August 15, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3t364

The Myth of the Republican Moderate

By Jonathan Weiler

August 15, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1bzeED6

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