It's Time to Shut Down the GOP

Years ago I never thought I'd be saying this, but in the best interests of America, it is time to shut down the Republican Party.  And in the process, it is time to drive the Christofascists and Tea Party extremists back into the political wilderness where they belong.  They have broken the social contract if you will that is required for democracy to work and are no out only to destroy our system of government.  The GOP has become a political terrorist organization that engages in hostage taking and the willing infliction of economic harm on others.  Bob Felton summed it up well:

By waging the civil analogue of guerrilla warfare upon the government over the Affordable Care Act — for 3.5-years, now, losing repeatedly in the courts and in the Congress as other needful business is neglected — the Republicans have essentially repudiated the social contract and made manifest their unfitness for democratic self-governance.

Ironically, it was none other than Republican heavyweight Barry Goldwater who warned this might happen someday:

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

 Felton has plenty of company in condemning today's irrational and dangerous GOP.  Conservative Jennifer Rubin has a good denunciation of the GOP in a column in the Washington Post.  Here are excerpts:

[T]there have now been multiple votes in which, contrary to the claims of the defunders, no Democrats have broken with the White House.

The White House and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid are practically gleeful. White House spokesman Jay Carney began to list the parade of horribles that a shutdown will entail. He sweetly implored the House Republicans to, you know, stop holding up the show and allow the government to stay open. The Republicans are trying to paint Reid’s decision to take Sunday off as the cause of a potential shutdown; it’s an operatives’ line and not a convincing strategy.

Unfortunately for the defund crowd, the Senate will have a clean CR on the table to point to as the “reasonable” way to end this. A disgusted Republican aide said of the defund protagonists: “These guys basically dug a grave, forced Boehner in and then walked away.”

At some point, the Republicans in the House, with or without the Vitter Amendment and with or without the Dems, will pass a clean CR. Anyone who imagined they’d obtain something monumental by threatening to blow themselves up must have been, well, working for Heritage Action or one of its comrades.

The nation simply can no longer function with such an irresponsible band of saboteurs controlling one of the major political parties.  It's time for the GOP to either throw out the crazies or die.  Right now, I hope it dies.