Did you watch the Democratic Presidential debate on Tuesday night? It was long on policy and a thoughtful discussion of the issues, and short on rancor, personal attacks, racism, sexism, ignorance and scientific denial. In short, it was the complete opposite of the Republican debates, seeing how it was conducted by a group of mature adults discussing issues Americans care about.
Then there's the Republican dysfunction in Congress, which is not only keeping the Republicans from being able to name a successor to one of the worst Speakers in history, John Boehner, but moving us quickly towards another government shutdown, which is, unbelievably, THE ACTUAL GOAL of many of them - people who were elected to lead us!
Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, two political analysts lay it out clearly.
There is no clear path out of our current distemper. The solution, like the diagnosis, must focus on the obvious but seldom acknowledged asymmetry between the parties. The Republican Party must become a conservative governing party once again and accept the assumptions and norms of our Madisonian system. That will likely require more election defeats, more honest reporting by the mainstream press and more recognition by the public that the problem is not "Washington" or "Congress" or "insiders" or politicians in general.
The burden is on the GOP because they are currently the major source of our political dysfunction. No happy talk about bipartisanship can obscure that reality. Unless other voices and movements arise within the Republican Party to change its character and course, our dysfunctional politics will continue.
Emphasis added by me.
The problem isn't Congress and it's certainly not the Democrats. The Republicans are crazy and the sooner we get rid of them, the sooner we'll be able to solve our seemingly intractable problems.
I've said it many times before. Both sides don't do it.
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