Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein are no strangers to D.C. politics. The two of them have been in Washington for more than 40 years — and they're renowned for their carefully nonpartisan positions.
But now, they say, Congress is more dysfunctional than it has been since the Civil War, and they aren't hesitating to point a finger at who they think is to blame.
"One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition," they write in their new book, Even Worse Than It Looks.Interview at NPR.orgThis is something that I've been saying for quite some time, both here and elsewhere. The Democrats are craven, inauthentic, and arrogant -- but the GOP is something else entirely. And not only has the GOP become a party of plugging their ears and yelling "lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala, I can't hear you!" when it comes to things like climate change, immigration and revenue, the media has also broken faith with the electorate by refusing to stand up and say "hey, this isn't right," but instead tries to play "fair and balanced" by suggesting that any point of view, no matter how stupid, no matter how untrue, deserves to be heard.
When the GOP isn't even willing to try to come up with rationales for their positions other than "we want to make Obama look bad", even when that's to the point of refusing to support republican plans that Obama supports because that might make Obama look GOOD, you don't have two parties of government, you have one party and one small child, refusing to do anything, and holding their breath till they turn blue in the face.
How can this be considered responsible governance? Well, it can't, I suppose. When Ronald Reagan is held up as your example of recognizing that, for example, you can't increase spending without increasing revenue, and you can't cut spending on the backs of the poor and the middle class, and yet the GOP even holds up a fictional version of him as their patron saint, where do you go from there? HOW can you go anywhere from there?
Until we have a media that's willing to stand up and say "this is wrong," until we have buy in for actual governance, there's no stopping gridlock. The GOP has to recognize that there's an actual job to be done here, and it can't simply be cut. But that's not on their litmus test, so we just sit and wait for something that may never happen.
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