The Furies Never End, by Frank Rich

[elleng]

The shutdown crisis is nothing we haven’t seen before.A good portion of America has been trying to sabotage the government for almost our entire history.

http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/government-shutdowns-2013-10/

[RainDog]

1. This really gets to what we're up against

They really don't care if they destroy the U.S. economy to "save" it.

[bemildred]

2. Now we are getting down to the real problem.

Arrogant, self-infatuated dumbassery and demagoguery.

Many politicians in this country are fakers and frauds who weren't good enough to make it in the real economy.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

3. Clarifies the problem. Thank you for this article.

<snip>

Some Democrats nonetheless cling to the hope that electoral Armageddon will purge the GOP of its radicals, a wish that is far less likely to be fulfilled now than it was after Goldwater’s landslide defeat, when liberalism was still enjoying the last sunny days of its postwar idyll. This was also the liberal hope after Gingrich’s political demise of 1998. But his revolution, whatever its embarrassments, hypocrisies, and failures, did nudge the country toward the right: It’s what pushed Clinton to announce in his 1996 State of the Union address that “the era of big government is over” and to adopt policy modulations that tamped down New Deal–Great Society liberalism. The right has only gained strength within the GOP ever since. Roughly half of the party’s current House population was first elected in 2010 or 2012, in the crucible of the tea-party revolt. While it’s Beltway conventional wisdom that these Republicans don’t know how to govern, the real issue is that they don’t want to govern. That’s their whole point, and they are sticking to it.

<snip>

From page 4

Making the 2014 elections ever more important.

[elleng]

4. Thanks