"The Republican Party has spent 30 years careering ever more deeply into ideological extremism, but one of the novel developments of the Obama years is its embrace of procedural extremism. The Republican fringe has evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all. In this sense, their historical precedents are not so much the Gingrich revolutionaries, or even their tea-party selves of a few years ago; the movement is more like the radical left of the sixties, had it occupied a position of power in Congress. And so the terms we traditionally use to scold bad Congresses—partisanship, obstruction, gridlock—don’t come close to describing this situation. The hard right’s extremism has bent back upon itself, leaving an inscrutable void of paranoia and formless rage and twisting the Republican Party into a band of anarchists."Chait's article is well worth reading, although it will be familiar territory to readers of this blog who by now will have read account after account of the mindless rage fueling the hard right's losing struggle with the realities of 21st century America. But, hey, let's get it all on the record.
Naturally, Weeper of the House John "Mr. Tangerine Man" Boehner is proud of this procedural extremism and of his caucus' race to the past:
House Speaker John Boehner says Congress "ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal."
The Ohio Republican makes the comments on an interview aired Sunday on CBS "Face the Nation." He was responding to a question about how little Congress is doing these days.
Boehner says Congress "should not be judged by how many new laws we create." (our emphasis)Yeah, you keep working on that Obamacare repeal (39 votes so far)!
With raising the debt ceiling later this year looming as the next Republican target for
