In Search of Republican Grown-Ups

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 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 aggregate economy, from 10 percent in 2009. Their appetite for billions in further cuts has only grown.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/opinion/in-search-of-republican-grown-ups.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print