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Saturday, April 28, 2012

Well, it's about friggin' time
Posted by Jill | 12:19 PM
I'm kind of amazed that WaPo even allowed this to be published under their banner:


Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.


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.

OK, so it's co-written by Norman Ornstein, who's one of Al Franken's buddies.  But he IS an American Enterprise Institute, so that gives him some conservative cover.  Or it would in a sane world.

But still -- for someone outside the left blogosphere to say this is important.  Dare we even hope that it's the start of a recognition in the media (outside of David Brooks, who's just hopeless) that no, both sides DON'T do it?
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2 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
The "ideologically extreme " GOP has just effectively nominated its most liberal candidate.
4/28/12, 3:23 PM  
Blogger Bob said...
The last time I came into contact with anyone claiming to be a Communist (other than poet Amiri Baraka, who may be some kind of Marxist), was back in college in 1970s, & even then nobody listened to them.
4/29/12, 5:12 PM  
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