Let's Just Say It

The Republicans need to be slapped down.  Hard.  They really are the party of ignorance.  How low and stupid can they get?  With a nominee like Romney?  About all one can hope is that some of the (remaining) sane members of the Republican Party will turn their back on the insanity and vote out many of the obstructionists.

We talked earlier in the week about an impressive op-ed from political scientists Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein -- celebrated and respected figures of the Washington establishment -- who argued, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."

For Mann and Ornstein, blaming "both sides" for what ails Washington is no longer accurate, and only exacerbates the problems posed by the radicalization of today's GOP. "When one party moves this far from the mainstream," they argued, "it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country's challenges."

The thesis comes from a new book from Mann and Ornstein,It's Even Worse Than It Looks, and nearly as interesting as their op-ed was a review of their book from the Washington Post's Robert Kaiser (via Kevin Drum).

Today's Republican Party has little in common even with Ronald Reagan's GOP, or with earlier versions that believed in government. Instead it 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 ... all but declaring war on the government." [...]

Mann and Ornstein rightly blame the news media for doing a mediocre job covering the most important political story of the last three decades: the transformation of the Republican Party. They are critical of the conventions of mainstream journalism that lead to the evenhandedness they have now abandoned themselves. They see a "reflexive tendency of many in the mainstream press to use false equivalence to explain outcomes," when Republican obstructionism and Republican rejection of science and basic facts have no Democratic equivalents. It's much easier to write stories "that convey an impression that the two sides are equally implicated." [...]

And now, as Mann and Ornstein document so vividly, at a time when only good government could help us rediscover our footing as a nation, our Grand Old Party defines itself as the party of anti-government. This is why the title of this book is so good: Our situation really is even worse than it looks.

To be sure, this doesn't exactly break new ground. But that's not what I find important about this. Rather, Kaiser, a Post associate editor, like Mann and Ornstein, is a centrist D.C. insider, not an ideologue or a pundit with a specific point of view.

In other words, what we have here is a group of respected, credible, inside-the-beltway establishment types who are now willing to acknowledge what is plainly true: Republican extremism has no modern precedent, and it making governing and policymaking nearly impossible, even during times of crises -- despite the demands that Very Serious People agree that "both sides" are always to blame for everything in all instances. Indeed, they're making these pronouncements in a surprising, matter-of-fact sort of way.

Here's hoping other respected, credible, inside-the-beltway establishment types feel emboldened to be equally candid about reality.

Original.

Let's Just Say It:  The Republicans Are The Problem

By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, Published: April 27

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

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 dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.

What happened?  Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South.  They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs.  But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names:  Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

Read the rest here.