Where are the Adults?

The leaders of the Republican Party, in full flight from their disastrous and juvenile shutdown stunt, now want to restock their ranks with grown-ups. “Let’s face it: it was not a good maneuver,” Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah told The New York Times recently. “You’ve got to have the adults running the thing.”

Mr. Hatch and other establishment senators believe that grown-ups would not threaten the country’s full faith and credit, or keep the government closed, in order to get their way. That’s true, but it’s a rather pallid definition of maturity. A mature and responsible political party would do more than prevent a government default; it would offer serious solutions to the nation’s most pressing problems instead of running from them. 

And it is there that Republicans – whether adults or Tea Party members – continue to let the public down.
At a time when the economy is desperate for federal help and 11.3 million people are still unemployed, the party – and not just its far-right wing – is still pretending that cutting spending and lowering the deficit remain the country’s most urgent priorities. Republicans won’t acknowledge that tax increases, along with spending cuts they have forced on the country, have already driven the deficit down to 4 percent of the economy, from 10 percent in 2009. Their appetite for billions in further cuts has only grown.

This will become obvious next week when the budget committees of the House and Senate gather for their first conference on the budget for fiscal year 2014, which began more than three weeks ago. (Republicans had refused the repeated requests of Democrats for a negotiation since April.) The conference is a moment to finally set aside the sequester cuts that have hobbled the economy and begin needed investments in education and infrastructure, rebuilding cities and the lives of those left behind.

But Republicans won’t hear of it.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking member of the budget panel, says that keeping the current spending caps is a bedrock principle. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, supposedly an anti-shutdown “adult,” wants to use the conference to cut social-welfare entitlements and give corporations more tax cuts. “We have to make a down payment on the debt and deficit,” he told Congressional Quarterly. That down payment has already been made, many times over – and Democrats have vowed not to even consider entitlement changes in the absence of big tax increases on the rich.

What ails the economy now is not corporate taxes but the iron lid on spending, clamped tight for two years.
 
The Republicans’ obsession with deficits is already taking a huge toll on the poor, who have seen cutbacks in vital programs, and could well see more if the Republicans have their way. Next week, for instance, a House-Senate conference on the farm bill will consider a proposal from allegedly “grown-up” House Republicans that would cut $39 billion from food stamps, which would push three million people off the program a year. Democrats will be so busy fighting off that proposal that they will have a hard time reversing the scheduled cut for all food stamp recipients that begins in November.

Senator Lamar Alexander says his party needs to persuade the public that it can be trusted with government. To do so, Republicans will have to do much more than simply reopen government’s doors.



In Search for Republican Grown-Ups, By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, New York Times

Don’t fart and then blame the dog

When Jon Stewart said this about the Republicans shutting down the government and then trying to put the blame for the shutdown on the Democrats and on President Obama, I rolled with laughter.  The statement was funny, but the situation was not.

The Republicans, led by Ted Cruz, figured the Democrats would cave to their demands, and did not care that the shutdown cost us $24 billion, according to Standard & Poor's.  They wanted to shut down the government rather than fund Obamacare. Later, some Republicans insisted it was not about Obamacare, but about stopping our “out-of-control” debt (they didn't mention our overall debt burden is declining). They did not care that consumer confidence has plunged to its lowest level since the '08 Wall Street meltdown. They did not care that, according to a report from the conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the debt ceiling crisis they have manufactured since 2011 has cost the country 900,000 jobs. And they did not care that the shutdown and possible debt default threatened the world economy, causing an Australian paper to wonder if "lunatics" had taken over in Washington.

In poll after poll, Americans blamed Republicans for the disaster, with Business Insider calling it "a catastrophe" for the GOP.  So the Republicans tried to shift the blame to the Democrats. Ted Cruz and Tea Party conglomerate Freedom Works vainly tried to label it "Harry Reid's shutdown" for the Democratic Senate majority leader. The problem is their argument would not stick because the American people would not blame ‘Big Government’ Democrats for shutting down the very same government that the Republicans want to shrink and drown in a bathtub.

As polls showed that the GOP suffered a humiliating loss over the shutdown, its own members are pointing fingers of blame at each other.  Complicit pundits, in their zeal to be ‘fair and balanced’ have turned their attention to Obama and pretended the shutdown was a loss for him, too. Why? Because the media stipulate that if both sides were to blame for the shutdown then both sides suffered losses. So pundits pretend the crisis highlighted a lack of leadership on Obama’s part.  The agreed-upon script is that the GOP’s stunning implosion meant Obama failed to lead by not bringing the two parties together. He wasn’t persuasive enough. If he had just tried a little harder, asked a little nicer, Republicans would have come around.

When Obama’s immediate predecessor, President Bush, was sworn into office, he was soon greeted by liberal Democrat George Miller (D-CA) who promised to help him secure the votes he needed to pass an education bill. And it was liberal Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) who personally guided Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation through Congress. Thanks to extremist Republicans, that political world in Washington no longer exists because Republicans re-wrote the rules. Yet pundits keep scoring Obama against the old rules. They keep scolding him for not winning over Republicans who refuse to work with him.

“…There is a reason Republicans almost certainly cannot be won over,” noted Washington Post writer Greg Sargent, who regularly pushes back against the media’s “leadership” charade. “And that this reason resides not in the failure of presidential persuasion but in basic realities about today’s GOP.”

Just ask Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA). After he defied his party and tried to help get a bipartisan background gun check bill through Congress last winter, he explained its defeat: “In the end it didn’t pass because we are so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it.” And with that, Toomey, a Republican senator, gave away the game. He pulled back the curtain and confirmed how the Republican Party actually functions under Obama: It fights him on every conceivable front, withholding the slightest bit of support not because most members do not want to see Obama succeed.

There a strong argument to be made that Obama did lead by staring down the radicals inside the Republican Party who closed the government down in search of political ransom. Obama stood firm like a brick wall against the force of the Republican sedition on behalf of the majority of Americans who disapproved of the shutdown and the Republican Party, and who did not want Obama to give in to the party’s outlandish demands.

The lack of leadership is not coming from the oval office. It is the Republicans who are not leading and yet blame Obama of such.  It is the Republicans who are harming the economy and yet try to blame Obama for it not growing fast enough. It is the Republicans who do not care if the country is destroyed in their attempt to achieve their unholy goal of taking down our president – not the reverse. It is the Republicans who are acting like traitors – not Obama. It is the Republicans who farted horribly in shutting down the government and then attempted to pin the stink on Obama.

Sources: Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America

Beginning of the end of the Tea Party?

Congress has finally worked out a deal to end the government shutdown and dodge default, but not before the Republican Party demonstrated to Americans just how conflicted and dangerous it is.
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, this week described our current Congress as a greater danger to national security than Al Qaeda, writing, “We don’t tend to talk about Congress as — at this stage — what it plainly is: the clearest and most present danger in the world to the national security of the United States.”

That is what the GOP-led House has brought us. Conservatives outside the chamber know defeat when they see it, and want to live to fight another day. But they beat their chests in vain as their laments fall on the deaf ears of the far-right political death squads.

On Tuesday, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial pages blasted:

“This is the quality of thinking — or lack thereof — that has afflicted many GOP conservatives from the beginning of this budget showdown. They picked a goal they couldn’t achieve in trying to defund ObamaCare from one House of Congress, and then they picked a means they couldn’t sustain politically by pursuing a long government shutdown and threatening to blow through the debt limit.”

Senator John McCain said this week, “Republicans have to understand we have lost this battle, as I predicted weeks ago, that we would not be able to win because we were demanding something that was not achievable.”

Senator Lindsey Graham put it more bluntly: “We really did go too far. We screwed up.”

But, far-right elements of the House cannot be reasoned with. They prefer to go down in a blaze of glory – or at least take the country down in one. And arguably no one is more the face of this disaster than Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, labeled by one New York Republican representative, Peter King, as a “fraud” and “false prophet.”  

The Houston Chronicle editorial board on Tuesday took the extraordinary step of trying to withdraw its endorsement of Cruz, an endorsement that no doubt helped get him elected. An editorial posted to the paper’s Web site began, “Does anyone else miss Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison?” that Senator Cruz replaced. It went on:

“When we endorsed Ted Cruz in last November’s general election, we did so with many reservations and at least one specific recommendation – that he follow Hutchison’s example in his conduct as a senator. Obviously, he has not done so. Cruz has been part of the problem in specific situations where Hutchison would have been part of the solution.”

It seems everyone is waking up to what a disaster this current Republican contingent of extremists has become and how poisonous they are to the functioning of our democracy. Better late than never, I suppose.

Cruz’s favorable ratings are underwater in Pew’s, Gallup’s, Fox News’ and Quinnipiac’s polling. But then, Cruz doesn’t put much stake in polls, with their pesky numbers.

According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken last week, views of the Republican Party sank to record lows and 70 percent of respondents thought Republicans in Congress were putting their own political agenda ahead of what was good for the country.

The poll also found that negative feelings about the Tea Party had risen, with 47 percent saying they had negative feelings about the group, including 34 percent who described their feelings as “very negative.” Just 21 percent of Americans now say they feel positive about the group.

But when Cruz was asked Friday about the poll, he dismissed it as having a problematic methodology. He said: “If you seek out liberal Obama supporters and ask them their views, they’re going to tell you they’re liberal Obama supporters. That’s not reflective of where this country is.” In fact, it is Cruz’s methodology that is flawed. His grandiloquence may well be the undoing of the Grand Old Party.

According to a Pew Research report released Tuesday “…A record-high 74% of registered voters now say that most members of Congress should not be reelected in 2014 (just 18% say they should). By comparison, at similar points in both the 2010 and 2006 midterm cycles only about half of registered voters wanted to see most representatives replaced.”

The report also found “…An early read of voter preferences for the 2014 midterm shows that the Democrats have a six-point edge: 49% of registered voters say they would vote for or lean toward voting for the Democratic candidate in their district, while 43% support or lean toward the Republican candidate.”

Republicans terribly misplayed a weak hand on the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. There was never any chance of success other than scaring the president and the Democrats into caving. President Obama and Harry Reid called their bluff. The Republicans were left with no options.

This is an embarrassment for the country, yes, but it is also an embarrassment for the Republican Party by laying bare their motives, tactics, and intention. Voters are likely to not forget this come next November.

As the conservative Matt Drudge tweeted on Wednesday: “Speaker Pelosi Part 2: Opening Jan 5, 2015.”

I hope so.

By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 16, 2013

“Republican Collapse”: They Picked A Goal They Couldn’t Achieve And A Means They Couldn’t Sustain

Ultimate blame lies with Fox News and its sheeple

Too many people seem to think that a government shutdown does not affect most people, is a nuisance for some people, and hurts only the government workers (whom we are all supposed to hate anyway, so who cares).  These same people think that the Gingrich-Clinton shutdown proved that shutdowns are not very harmful.  But what these ignoramuses do not get is that the Gingrich-Clinton shutdown took place against the background of a booming economy. Today we have a weak economy, with falling government spending the main cause of that weakness. A shutdown would cause a further economic hit which will become a big deal if the shutdown goes on and on. 

But this government shutdown will seem benign compared with what will happen if Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Failure to raise the ceiling would mean missed payments on existing U.S. government debt with terrifying consequences.  Financial markets from around the world have long treated U.S. bonds as the ultimate safe asset. The assumption that America will always honor its debts is the bedrock on which the world financial system rests. Treasury bills (short-term U.S. bonds) are what worldwide investors demand when they want absolutely solid collateral against loans. Treasury bills are so essential for this role that in times of severe stress they are treated as being better than cash.

A default could make the world believe that U.S. bonds were not safe, that America could no longer be counted on to honor its debts. Suddenly, the whole world wide financial system would be disrupted. Financial institutions would quickly cobble together alternative arrangements while dumping U.S. bonds creating a huge financial crisis. The value of the dollar would drop exponentially causing prices to soar. For example, a loaf of bread that now costs $3.50 would cost two to three times as much. This crisis would dwarf the crash set off by the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Our U.S. government – as we once knew it – would never run this kind of risk; except that we now have a contingency of insane Teapublican libertarian ignoramuses in our Congress that thinks defaulting on U.S. bonds would be just a hiccup in the world market.  These clowns are delusional, about both the economics and the politics.

Because of the Teapublicans we currently do not have a sane political system; we have a system in which a substantial number of Republicans believe that they can force President Obama to cancel the health care reform by threatening a government shutdown, by threatening a debt default, or both, and in which Republican leaders who actually know better are too cowardly to tell the truth to party’s delusional wing – or maybe they have tried and failed because these numbskulls have no understanding due to low IQs.

These Teapublican Christian fundamentalist radicals generally reject expert warnings about the dangers of default, so they apparently have every intention of marching this country's economy over the cliff if President Obama does not give them everything they want – President Obama's re-election means nothing to them. They believe that the majority of the United Stated citizens are on their side. Meanwhile, reasonable people know that President Obama cannot and will not let the office of the President of the United States be blackmailed in this way – and not just because health reform is his key policy legacy. The biggest reason is that if he makes concessions to people who threaten to blow up the world economy unless they get what they want, he might as well tear up the Constitution. But Teapublican radicals still insist that President Obama must cave in to their demands.

Even though they say they do, these Teapublicans do not respect the Office of the Presidency or the Constitution. They do not have any understanding about how our government was set up to work. 

The votes to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling are there, and always have been. Every Democrat in the House – along with enough Republicans to gain a majority – would vote for a clean continuing resolution to keep the government running. The problem is that Speaker Boehner is so fearful of the Teapublicans taking his position of Speaker from him that he will not bring the CR to the floor for an up or down vote.

I have read many OpEds and listened to pundits on television who think that Wall Street will come to the rescue by telling Republican leaders that they have to put an end to the nonsense. But Teapublicans only listen to FOX news. They will not listen to the business community. Big Business currently lacks the power to rein in the Tea Party radicals that they helped to put into office. President Obama may ultimately have to either let default happen or give the blackmailers some sort of win. In other word, he will have to choose a financial crisis or a constitutional crisis.

I say he should choose default and let the far right wing learn their lesson even though this country will pay for it for years.  It would be better than shredding our Constitution.

Boehner, definitely, is to blame for being such a weak “leader.”  But the ultimate blame for the shutdown and for the possible default lies in the ignorant, uneducated, uninformed sheeple who follow FOX News' every command, believes every FOX News' lie, and voted these damned Teapublicans into office.

 

Republicans have completely lost it

I cannot write about this subject any better than this author, so I am putting a copy of his essay on my blog and giving you the author’s name and link below:

Republicans Sabotaging, Not Governing. This Is Who They Are Now.

Imagine a political party that keeps government from helping people, because that might lead people to support government. Imagine a political party that hurts parts of the country because those parts tend to not vote the way they want. Imagine a political party that would hurt the public, the economy, and the country so they could say in the next election, “Hey look at how the country is hurting, vote for us instead.” That could never happen here, could it?

At RedState the post entitled, Defund Or Be Challenged calls on Republicans to demand that Obamacare be defunded – killed – or they will shut down the government. It says pass a budget that defunds Obamacare and if the Senate won’t take it up or the President vetoes it, shut down the government rather than pass a reasonable budget.

This is who they are now.

If you say, “So what?” and ask, “Who is RedState” then you are making the same mistake that many in the Democratic establishment have been making for decades. Asking “Who is Rush Limbaugh / Glenn Beck / Sean Hannity / Sarah Palin / Ann Coulter / etc.” or saying that what they say doesn’t matter is a mistake. This is who they are now. This is who the Republican Party is now. It is RedState, Limbaugh, Coulter, Drudge Report, etc. The Republican Party is not Bob Dole or John McCain or even Ronald Reagan. It is not Ronald Reagan playing poker with Tip O’Neill. Ronald Reagan would be primaried out as a “RINO” in today’s Republican Party.

If you don’t get it yet, let this sink in: Mitch McConnell is being primaried for being “a big government guy” and too “progressive” and working with Democrats. Mitch McConnell!

This is who the Republicans are now: RedState, Limbaugh, Coulter … this is who they are now.

Obamacare Helps People – So They Want It Killed.

Obamacare, for all its policy and political flaws, makes our health care system far better than the corrupt and dysfunctional system we have now. (I think Medicare-For-All is the right approach and would have high public support.) People with “preexisting conditions” will finally be able to get insurance. Subsidies will help people afford private insurance. The expansion of Medicaid will help millions receive health care.

The Republicans want it killed, period, and are willing to sabotage everything to get that. They want this because it will help people and therefore will be popular. They offer no alternative plan and do not care about all of these people who will be helped. In fact, they complain that so many new people will have access to health care that it could cause a shortage of doctors! They want the health care act killed because it helps people, which they fear could lead people to support Democrats and government in general.

They mean it. They are willing to shut down the government unless their demands are met. They are about sabotaging the program and sabotaging all of government to make that happen.

Is that a strong statement? Remember that they were willing to refuse to raise the debt limit and destroy the credit rating of the country – and destroy the world’s economy unless their demands were met. Remember that they have actually shut down government to get what they want.

This is who they are now. 

Norm Ornstein has an important piece at The Atlantic, The Unprecedented, Contemptible GOP Quest to Sabotage Obamacare:

“The clear comparison is the Medicare prescription-drug plan. When it passed Congress in 2003, Democrats had many reasons to be furious. The initial partnership between President Bush and Senator Edward Kennedy had resulted in an admirably bipartisan bill – it passed the Senate with 74 votes. Republicans then pulled a bait and switch, taking out all of the provisions that Kennedy had put in to bring along Senate Democrats, jamming the resulting bill through the House in a three-hour late-night vote marathon that blatantly violated House rules and included something close to outright bribery on the House floor, and then passing the bill through the Senate with just 54 votes – while along the way excluding the duly elected conferees, Tom Daschle (the Democratic leader!) and Jay Rockefeller, from the conference-committee deliberations.

“The implementation of that bill was a huge challenge, and had many rocky moments. It required educating millions of seniors, most not computer-literate, about the often complicated choices they had to create or change their prescription coverage. Imagine if Democrats had gone all out to block or disrupt the implementation – using filibusters to deny funding, sending threatening letters to companies or outside interests who mobilized to educate Medicare recipients, putting on major campaigns to convince seniors that this was a plot to deny them Medicare, comparing it to the ill-fated Medicare reform plan that passed in 1989 and, after a revolt by seniors, was repealed the next year.”

Dems could have taken down the Republican Party over this, but instead they let seniors get the prescriptions, at least as far as this program went. Compare to the way Republicans are trying to sabotage the new health care plan.

For three years, Republicans in the Senate refused to confirm anybody to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the post that McClellan had held in 2003-04 – in order to damage the possibility of a smooth rollout of the health reform plan. Guerrilla efforts to cut off funding, dozens of votes to repeal, abusive comments by leaders, attempts to discourage states from participating in Medicaid expansion or crafting exchanges, threatening letters to associations that might publicize the availability of insurance on exchanges, and now to have a government shutdown, or to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, unless the president agrees to stop all funding for implementation of the plan.

This is who they are now. 

For President Obama’s entire first term, Republicans obstructed every effort to boost the economy. They blocked badly-needed additional stimulus. They blocked infrastructure projects because they would employ people. They blocked the Bring Jobs Home Act. They blocked everything. Then they campaigned by saying the economy isn’t better, so vote for them.

Republicans sabotaged the new immigration bill. The reason? They say that Hispanics who get citizenship might vote for Democrats.

Republicans have been opposing statehood for D.C. for the same reason – the people there might vote for Democrats.

Republicans in the old slave states, newly unleashed by the Supreme Court, are working furiously to get minorities, seniors, students, and others who might vote for Democrats off the voting rolls. They are repealing early voting because black churches organize voter drives. They are passing extremely restrictive voter-ID laws that specifically exclude the kinds of ID that minorities are more likely to hold.

This is who they are now.

They have to be held accountable. The answer is not to threaten to withhold your vote when you don’t get everything you want. The answer is for all of us – every single alienated, ignored, disillusioned citizen – to promise to always vote. Then the people you would actually want to vote for will have some assurance they can win, and take the risk of running, even if they can’t raise a poop-load of corporate cash.

From: Republicans Sabotaging, Not Governing. This Is Who They Are Now.

By Dave Johnson, Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/26-2

This shutdown belongs to Boehner and the GOP

By Tuesday morning, the leadership failure of Speaker John Boehner was obvious to all. In encouraging the impossible quest of House Republicans to dismantle healthcare reform, he pushed the country into a government shutdown that will now begin to take a grievous economic toll.

At any point, Mr. Boehner could have stopped it. Had he put on the floor a simple temporary spending resolution to keep the government open, without the outrageous demands to delay or defund the health reform law, it could easily have passed the House with a strong majority – including sizable support from Republican members, many of whom are aware of how badly this collapse will damage their party.

But Mr. Boehner refused.

He stood in the well of the House and repeated the same old tired lies that the Affordable Care Act was killing jobs. He came up with a series of increasingly ridiculous demands: defund the health law, delay it for a year, stop its requirement that employers pay for contraception, block the medical device tax, delay the individual mandate for a year, and remove Congressional employees’ health subsidies. All were instantly rejected by the Senate. “They’ve lost their minds,” Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said of the House Republicans. “They keep trying to do the same thing over and over again” and expect a different result.  

Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

Finally, at the last minute, when there was still time to end the charade with a straightforward spending bill, Mr. Boehner made the most absurd demand of all: an immediate conference committee with the Senate. Suddenly, with less than an hour left, he wanted to set up formal negotiations?

For six months, the Senate has been demanding a conference with the House on the 2014 budget – talks that might have prevented the impasse in the first place. But the Boehner adamantly refused, knowing the GOP would not succeed in getting all the cuts to taxes and spending that it demands. For Mr. Boehner to call for a conference near the witching hour was the height of hypocrisy.

The consequences of Mr. Boehner’s failure was immediate: 800,000 government employees thrown out of work, over a million more working without pay, offices that provide important services closed, and programs on which poor people depend – like the Women, Infants and Children nutrition system – cut off. The longer Republicans refuse to approve a rational spending measure, the more federal agencies will be affected and the greater the damage done to an economy still in recovery.

Having let down the public, Republicans will now, inevitably, scramble to save their reputation. They are desperate to make it appear as if President Obama and the Democrats are the ones being intransigent, hoping voters will think that everyone is at fault and simply blame “Washington.”  Boehner even mocked the president on Monday for refusing to negotiate over health reform, as if he actually expected President Obama to join in wrecking a law that will provide health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans under threat of blackmail.

On Tuesday, Republicans came up with another self-serving offer, proposing to open a few government departments whose closures are likely to produce negative news coverage, such as Veterans Affairs and the national parks. Democrats quickly made it clear that only a full reopening of government would suffice and tabled the bills.

Earlier in his presidency, in 2011, Obama made the catastrophic mistake in the face of just this sort of extortion to believe that Boehner could be reasonable. This time, however, the cynical games of the Republicans are not going to work.

The Republicans’ overwhelming obsession with destroying Obamacare and insane desire to ruin the president has been on full display. And, as the public’s anger grows over this entirely unnecessary crisis, it should be aimed at the Republican Party and its Speaker, not the Democrats, not the President.

The Culpability of John Boehner

There is an inane tendency for reporters on American network news and especially on CNN to adopt a position that "both sides" are equally to blame for the nation's political dysfunction. Sometimes this assessment is correct.  Not this time, however. There is only one party to blame for the first government shutdown in 17 years. The blame lies squarely on the Republican Party and specifically on John Boehner, a weak and cowardly Speaker of the House.

Currently, the debate happening in Washington right now is not so much between Democrats and Republicans, but rather, it is one mostly occurring between Republicans who are trying to find some magic bullet to destroy Obamacare regardless of who is harmed or how much the country's fiscal health is damaged.

In the House of Representatives, every bill passed that would allow the government to continue to operate was amended with provisions defunding Obamacare. This is, for Democrats, a nonstarter – and the Republicans know it. The Affordable Care Act is the president's and the Democrat party’s signature achievement and neither will produce or sign a bill that undoes it.

Obamacare is the law of the land. It was passed by Congress (at which time the Democrats gave the Republicans every opportunity to join in – using many of the Republicans' demands and suggestions to try to get a bi-partisan bill), signed by the president, and upheld by the US Supreme Court. After nearly four years of  Republicans, along with FOX News, trying to derail it by using fear-mongering and lies, the insurance exchanges are up and running. Millions have already applied for their reasonably priced health insurance (more reasonably priced in states running their own exchanges).

Obamacare is now going into full effect. There is no reason for President Obama to be cowed by such legislative extortion. Yet, rather than accept the reality of Obamacare, Republicans are using a government shutdown and threat to default on the nation's debt to try to undo it.

In key respects, this disheartening series of events is the logical conclusion of the Republican Party's descent into insanity. This descent accelerated when President Obama was elected in 2008; and it worsened by a factor of 10 when he was re-elected in 2012. The Republicans just cannot accept that America would elect a black Democrat as President – twice.

The GOP has become a party dominated by a small group of politicians who are fundamentally nihilistic, contemptuous of democracy, bigoted against the President, and willing (even proud) to operate outside the long-accepted norms of the American governmental system. They refuse to accept majority rule.  They refuse to compromise with the Democrats, who are seen as the "enemy."

In the US system of government, compromise is its most essential element. US Democracy cannot work without compromise. Republicans must work with Democrats; the House of Representatives must work with the Senate; and both bodies must find common ground with the president. It is not always smooth, but it has generally worked for over 200 years – until the Tea Party faction got enough seats in the House of Representatives to gum up the works. This faction only represents about 18% of Americans, yet they have Boehner cowering in a corner, scared to stand up to them.

The problem today is that the modern GOP thinks compromise is anathema. That is the only explanation for how members of the party can view the possibility of a government shutdown – or even worse, the catastrophe of  a default on America's debt – as somehow a better option than reconciling themselves to the "abomination" that, bizarrely, they believe Obamacare to be (just like they believe all our social programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, are abominations). Granted, this isn't the view of all Republican office-holders – or even a majority. But it is the view of the party's most extreme rightwing supporters, which happens to be the majority of their base. Today, it is these extreme far right crazies who are controlling the party's leadership.

If the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, were to bring a clean budget bill to the House floor, with no provisions defunding or delaying Obamacare, it would almost certainly pass – with Democrats and Republicans joining together to support it. It would then get majority approval in the Senate and be signed by President Obama. So, why hasn't that happened yet? Because Boehner has pledged  to the Tea Party to only pass legislation that has the support of enough Republican members (unaided by Democrats) to be enacted – the so-called Hastert Rule of the House. They refuse to pass anything that requires the Democrats votes because that would entail compromise.  The result, of course, is that everything they pass and send to the Senate is extremely partisan and therefore Dead on Arrival (DOA).

So, now the government will remain shut down for a few days, probably up until the debt ceiling is imminent.  The US will come perilously close to a debt default. In the end, however, the semi-sane Republican faction will come to their senses, concede defeat, and pass a budget resolution and debt limit extension with Democratic support.

That the US will have come to such a pass – for no reason other than the extremism of the Republican Party and the culpability of John Boehner as Speaker of the House – is an important reminder of who is blame for the government dysfunction that has come to define our current US democracy.