(David Frum) The Anti-Plan B GOP: They Only Look Crazy

[brooklynite]

The Daily Beast:

Let's suppose for a moment that the two dozen Republicans who rejected Speaker Boehner's Plan B are rational. What do their chosen means tell us about their desired ends?

...snip...

For almost any given Republican, the best possible outcome of the Plan B negotiations would have been for Plan B to pass - but for that particular Republican to vote nay. The trouble was, that there were too many Republicans who wished to avail themselves of that outcome. They all rushed the exits together, and there was not enough room to accommodate the stampede. It's a classic "prisoner's dilemma" problem from political science, and the dilemma achieved its usual grim result.

...snip...

The prisoner's dilemma arises, remember, because the prisoners have no way to make binding agreements. But the whole point of a political party is to overcome that dilemma, to create structures that reward cooperation and punish defection.

The deepest moral of the Plan B debacle is that those structures have broken down inside the GOP. And that's a very scary moral indeed.

By George, I think he's got it...

[Kber]

1. You buy into the theory that human beings should be selfish

but expect your party members to be selfless?

I don't think that's going to work.

[kiranon]

2. These Republicans didn't come to Washington to govern. They came

to end government. Any deals will have to be made with House Democrats and those Republicans (if there are any) who understand that compromise is part of how deals are made for the good of the country and not for their own twisted sense of faux outrage against the system.