Radical Republicans The Tea Party remains the GOP’s dominant force, unbowed and still deliriously ir

[DonViejo]

The Tea Party remains the GOP’s dominant force, unbowed and still deliriously irresponsible

By Jacob Weisberg

For the past 20 years, American politics has been defined by Republican revolt. The right-wing radicalism that now worries the whole world first emerged in response to Bill Clinton's election in 1992. It's not that Republicans were never extreme before that time. Challenges to the legitimacy of federal authority from the people who now identify as Republicans trace back to pro-slavery attempts at nullification and segregationist assertions of states’ rights. But it was 20 years ago that the Congressional wing of the GOP, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, adopted belligerent noncooperation as its defining stance.

It was Gingrich who turned bipartisanship from Washington’s greatest virtue to its most reviled vice. Under his leadership, congressional Republicans refused any quarter on Clinton health care reform and supplied no votes for the economic plan that spurred the long boom of the 1990s. In their new mode, Republicans refused to vote on presidential nominations and buried the White House in investigations and subpoenas. It was Gingrich who in 1995 invented the tactic of refusing to raise the debt ceiling as a cudgel to get Clinton to agree to outsize spending cuts. It was Gingrich who invented the tactic of shutting down the government for the same end.

Bill Clinton's view was that the Republican refusal to be reasonable was all about him. Because he was elected in a three-way race without an absolute majority, he thought Republicans never accepted him as legitimate. An alternate view is that the radical Republican style was largely a matter of incentives and rewards. Abandoning traditions of responsibility and civility won the GOP control of both houses of Congress in 1994. Rejecting any compromise brought Republicans the perks and power of majority control for the first time in 40 years. Thus did the politics of total resistance become their path of least resistance.

In subsequent years, the conservative movement built up an elaborate incentive structure to favor extremist views and tactics by individual politicians. State Republican parties redrew maps to create safe congressional districts where appealing to swing voters would no longer be required. Organizations like the Club for Growth and Americans for Tax Reform targeted Republican moderates for political extermination, recruiting primary challengers to run against them, scripting their attack ads and funding their campaigns. The Tea Party emerged partly out of inchoate anger at social and economic change, and partly in response to these incentives.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_big_idea/2013/10/shutdown_and_the_tea_party_the_gop_s_radical_right_wing_is_still_in_charge.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content

[truebluegreen]

1. Good read.

Depressing, but good.