Monday Reading

Steve Coll in The New Yorker, on the Tea Party, Sen. Mitch "Missy" McConnell (Weasel-KY) and Republican decline:

The Tea Party’s anti-intellectualism reflects a longer, deeper decline in the Republican Party’s ability to tolerate a diversity of ideas and public-policy strategies, and to adapt to American multiculturalism. Mitt Romney’s poor showing among Latino voters in 2012 helped insure Barack Obama’s reëlection. Republican leaders, chastened and without any other obvious way to increase their vote base before 2016, pledged earlier this year to revive a comprehensive immigration-reform bill. Yet party leaders, in part because they have been tied down since July by the debt confrontation, haven’t found a way to move legislation past the nativist caucus in the House.

In line with Coll's premise above, read Steve Benen at MaddowBlog on Sen. Marco "Polo!" Rubio (Craven-FL) and prospects for immigration reform with the New Confederate Party in charge in the House:

It was only a matter of time before Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) abandoned the immigration reform legislation he ostensibly helped write, and as of this morning, the transition is complete. A top spokesperson for the Florida Republican told TPM Rubio believes the House should consider “a series of individual bills,” instead of the comprehensive approach that enjoyed bipartisan support in the Senate, and which would probably pass the House in an up-or-down vote.

Finally, E.J. Dionne, Jr., talks about not repeating damaging policy mistakes foisted on us by the New Confederate Party and their tea bagger base:

Here’s the mistake made by President Obama and the Democrats that nobody is talking about: They have been too fearful of confronting our country’s three-year obsession with the wrong problem.

And here is the tea party’s greatest victory: It has made the wrong problem the center of policymaking.

(Spoiler alert:  Dionne's talking about Republicans rolling back Democratic low- and- middle class benefit programs in the guise of "deficit reduction" -- a.k.a.,  budget cuts for thee, tax breaks for me.)