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Michael Tomasky: End Days for the GOP
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/27/end-days-for-the-gop.htmlEnd Days for the GOP
by Michael Tomasky Sep 27, 2013 5:45 AM EDT
After years of sabotaging government and getting away with it, the GOP has finally gone too far. America knows it, and so does the party itself. By Michael Tomasky
Watching the GOP convulse these last few days, I sense that we just might finally be on the cusp of an important and long-awaited moment. Up until now during the Obama era, the Republicans’ scorched-earth politics have harmed their party, but they have always harmed the Democrats nearly as much—or, in the long term, even more. It’s a big reason why they do the things they do—they know cynically that if they bring the government to a standstill, most people will just blame both parties, and indeed might even cast more blame on the party of government, the Democrats.
The gig may be about up. The odds are good that by the morning of October 18, one of two (correct) perceptions will be broadly held by the American public: one, that the Republican Party has collapsed into all-out ideological civil war; two, that the Republicans are a party not merely of obstructionists but destructionists, in ways that will be so evident that even those independents devoted to the idea that both sides are to blame will run up the white flag. All the Republicans’ madness of the last five years is finally going to catch up with them.
snip//
The Republicans had already decided, back in August, that while they would put up a bit of a fight on government shutdown, they were basically going to put their eggs in the debt-ceiling basket. I can see why, superficially. A government shutdown is easy for people to understand, and more people will blame the party that doesn’t care about government. Whereas the debt limit is hard to understand and can easily be blamed on overspending by the president.
That may be, but there’s another group of people who understand the debt limit very well, and that’s America’s CEOs and financial titans. In the final 72 hours before the October 17 borrowing deadline, you can be sure that they’ll be calling Boehner and Mitch McConnell frantically, saying, “Are you guys out of your minds?”
They’ll almost certainly cave, just like they did on the fiscal-cliff deal. Or maybe they won’t. They lose either way. In the former case, all their big talk came to nothing. In the latter, they’ve driven the country down the sinkhole. And so, like I said up top, they’ll be seen either as in total disarray, or as complete saboteurs.
You can only set so many houses on fire before people finally figure out that this isn’t happening by accident and you must be an arsonist. The GOP is now flirting with that moment. It can’t come soon enough.
28 replies
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There's still going to be a perpetual 'RWNJ fringe' (pro militia, anti-anyone who's not white and "Christian"
group that makes up +/- 15% but if there's no 'mainstream conservative' party, per se, I sadly see the center-right Dems taking what used to be our party even more to the right, and there being just a frazzle of center left/progressive groups that can't get anything progressive done.
Sigh. 
Response to babylonsister (Original post)
the lot of loons, obstructionists, and destructionists. 
