David Brooks seems to think the current posturing on the debt ceiling - and the seeming willingness to either risk financial collapse or ignore anyone who believes that's a possibility - proves it. He's pretty harsh:
. . . the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.
The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no.
If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.
The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.
As if this is not enough, some Tea Party activists are unhappy with some of the newbies and are looking for people to challenge them from the right:
On the flip side, groups aligned with the Tea Party movement, which helped push many new-to-politics candidates into House seats, are disenchanted with some of their new hires and are pondering if they can raise the money, and the firepower, to find someone to take them on.
“I do think it is going to be more competitive,” said Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. “With the freshmen who claim to be Tea Party or claim to support the ideas of the Tea Party movement but haven’t kept their promise, I think it will be tough for them.”
This explains why freshman Republicans are not inclined to compromise. The question for 2012 will be whether this creates an opening for Democrats in the center.
