What we've observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party's arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency. I see no other coherent message or strategy since 2008. Just opposition to everything, zero support for a president grappling with a recession their own party did much to precipitate, and facing a fiscal crisis the GOP alone made far worse with their spending in the Bush-Cheney years. There is not a scintilla of responsibility for their past; not a sliver of good will for a duly elected president. Worse, figures like Cantor and McCain actively seek to back foreign governments against the duly elected president of their own country, and seek to repeal the signature policy achievement of Obama's first two years, universal healthcare.
I know it is the opposition's role to oppose. But the sheer scale and absolutism of the opposition, and its continuation in the lame duck session, even over such small but integral reforms such as the new START and DADT repeal, is remarkable.
The two parties are evenly spread in this 50-50 country, but only one can brook no compromise in its accelerating rush to the far right. And that is what it seems we have to contemplate for the next two years - total paralysis in the face of urgent problems as part of a game of cynical partisan brinkmanship. They simply cannot bear that another party might actually have a role to play in government.
It's that last sentence that expertly sums up the modern Republican Party. They literally cannot fathom why, how, and through what means that anyone other than the Republicans themselves be allowed to pass legislation, issue executive orders, or even have a voice in the way this country is run, because these Republicans honestly don't believe that anyone other than hard-core Tea Party Republicans in this country should even have a say in how the country is run.
That's the logical endpoint of all this "we're Real America and you're not" tribalism. If you're not one of them, you don't count. Only their opinions do. They believe they are doing "the country's" work by blockading everything they can and they don't give a pile of elephant dung about what anyone else thinks, because they really do not care. Anyone who's not a Republican voter doesn't exist to these guys, so why should anyone else even get an opinion on how America should operate?
Our way or we all burn together. This is "compromise." If Sully can see it, it has to be evident to the rest of the country.
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