The popular storyline goes that voters are seeking political outsiders this year in their frustration over a government where the legislative gears are frozen and nothing gets done. What that storyline forgets is that this gridlock was by design, that GOP leaders held a meeting on the very evening of the president’s first inauguration and explicitly decided upon a policy of non-cooperation to deny him anything approaching a bipartisan triumph. [snip]After noting the damage this nihilist strategy has wrought on politics in America, Pitts concludes on a somber note:
Republicans and their media accomplices buttressed that strategy with a campaign of insult and disrespect designed to delegitimize Obama. With their endless birther stupidity, their death panels idiocy, their constant budget brinksmanship and their cries of, “I want my country back!” they stoked in the public nothing less than hatred for the interloper in the White House who’d had the nerve to be elected president.
It is bad enough the Republicans may have destroyed themselves. One wonders whether they will take America with them.There's more reading on Rump and the Republican implosion here, here, and here, if you have the stomach this morning.
BONUS: Nancy LeTourneau has a great follow- up to Pitts.
