I shudder whenever I think about what the mentality of the Republican Party has become. The sick feeling intensifies when I see the so-called leadership of the GOP fawning over Christofascists and Tea Party dolts who don't care what harm they do to the nation or how badly they trample over the rights of others as they cling to their - in my view at least, psychotic ideologies. The consequence is that there is no longer anyone in charge to rein in the occupants of the mental ward because the leadership has either become as crazy as the inmates or too spineless to stand up to their insanity. It's a problem that has been a while in coming but which was created by the GOP leadership's willingness to prostitute itself to unsavory elements in society for short term political gain. Now we may all be about to pay a huge financial price. A Daily Beast column conjectures that the GOP may now have backed itself into a corner through its own demagoguery to a point where compromise is impossible:
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The “push” of the details of any deal (and the threat of economic meltdown) will eventually come head to head with the “shove” of the hard emotional truth that the vast majority of Washington Republicans and conservatives will not do anything, participate in any act, that can be construed as a win for Barack Obama.
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I say emotion is stronger than reason, and everything about the way the right has behaved in the Obama era suggests to me that it (not just the right-wing politicians, but its media outlets and entire ideological infrastructure) has been girding itself for precisely this fight. This in turn means that the votes needed to avert disaster might very well not be there.
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[A] group’s rhetoric has a way of creating its own reality, which in turn forces a certain kind of behavior. If you say someone is a terrible American, even if you’re just joking at first, eventually you believe it. And if you believe it, how can you negotiate with the person? You can’t. You can only defeat him.
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This is the cry in Tea Party circles, and it is only going to crescendo as the debt deadline gets closer. Because as a deal takes shape, and as an actual vote approaches, the next thing that will happen is the right-wing media network is going to kick into gear, and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and all the others are going to scream that a raising of the debt ceiling, even a temporary one, is a win for Obama, and any Republican who goes along with it is committing treason.
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Obama is everything the GOP base and the right-wing media hate. Your typical conservative legislator is all-too-aware of this and feels (not knows—feels) many of the same impulses himself. Economic calamity is both hypothetical and a thing that exists in the realm of reason. People—and surely Obama himself, Mr. Reasonable—are counting on reason to prevail. To which I ask one question: Why would it now?
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The “push” of the details of any deal (and the threat of economic meltdown) will eventually come head to head with the “shove” of the hard emotional truth that the vast majority of Washington Republicans and conservatives will not do anything, participate in any act, that can be construed as a win for Barack Obama.
*
I say emotion is stronger than reason, and everything about the way the right has behaved in the Obama era suggests to me that it (not just the right-wing politicians, but its media outlets and entire ideological infrastructure) has been girding itself for precisely this fight. This in turn means that the votes needed to avert disaster might very well not be there.
*
[A] group’s rhetoric has a way of creating its own reality, which in turn forces a certain kind of behavior. If you say someone is a terrible American, even if you’re just joking at first, eventually you believe it. And if you believe it, how can you negotiate with the person? You can’t. You can only defeat him.
*
This is the cry in Tea Party circles, and it is only going to crescendo as the debt deadline gets closer. Because as a deal takes shape, and as an actual vote approaches, the next thing that will happen is the right-wing media network is going to kick into gear, and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and all the others are going to scream that a raising of the debt ceiling, even a temporary one, is a win for Obama, and any Republican who goes along with it is committing treason.
*
Obama is everything the GOP base and the right-wing media hate. Your typical conservative legislator is all-too-aware of this and feels (not knows—feels) many of the same impulses himself. Economic calamity is both hypothetical and a thing that exists in the realm of reason. People—and surely Obama himself, Mr. Reasonable—are counting on reason to prevail. To which I ask one question: Why would it now?
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