{"id":4781,"date":"2012-04-28T19:09:36","date_gmt":"2012-04-29T01:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/?p=4781"},"modified":"2012-04-28T19:09:37","modified_gmt":"2012-04-29T01:09:37","slug":"lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem-wapo-amen-to-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/election\/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem-wapo-amen-to-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.-WaPo. Amen to that."},"content":{"rendered":"

Hat tip to dangerousmeta<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. – The Washington Post<\/a> By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, Published: April 27<\/p>\n

\n

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science<\/a>; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.<\/p>\n

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country\u2019s challenges. \u2026<\/p>\n

The GOP\u2019s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraskacalled his party \u201cirresponsible\u201d<\/a> in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle. \u201cI think the Republican Party is captive to political movements that are very ideological, that are very narrow,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen so much intolerance as I see today in American politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe<\/a> last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. \u201cThe Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,\u201d he wrote on the Truthout Web site. \u2026<\/p>\n

[I]t is up to voters to decide. If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2019s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. – The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hat tip to dangerousmeta. Let\u2019s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. – The Washington Post By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, Published: April 27 The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and … Continue reading Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.-WaPo. Amen to that.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4782,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4781\/revisions\/4782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}