Most GOP contenders are pulling ahead of Hillary in the polls and this wizard of smart writes this? And on the very day of the first DNC debate? Unbelievable!


"The House Republican caucus is close to ungovernable these days. How did this situation come about?

This was not just the work of the Freedom Caucus or Ted Cruz or one month’s activity. The Republican Party’s capacity for effective self-governance degraded slowly, over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals. Basically, the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own.


By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love.

All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party. Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced. Public figures are prisoners of their own prose styles, and Republicans from Newt Gingrich through Ben Carson have become addicted to a crisis mentality. Civilization was always on the brink of collapse. Every setback, like the passage of Obamacare, became the ruination of the republic. Comparisons to Nazi Germany became a staple.

This produced a radical mind-set. Conservatives started talking about the Reagan “revolution,” the Gingrich “revolution.” Among people too ill educated to understand the different spheres, political practitioners adopted the mental habits of the entrepreneur. Everything had to be transformational and disruptive. Hierarchy and authority were equated with injustice. Self-expression became more valued than self-restraint and coalition building. A contempt for politics infested the Republican mind.

Politics is the process of making decisions amid diverse opinions. It involves conversation, calm deliberation, self-discipline, the capacity to listen to other points of view and balance valid but competing ideas and interests.

But this new Republican faction regards the messy business of politics as soiled and impure. Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are regarded as aliens. Political identity became a sort of ethnic identity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal.

A weird contradictory mentality replaced traditional conservatism. Republican radicals have contempt for politics, but they still believe that transformational political change can rescue the nation. Republicans developed a contempt for Washington and government, but they elected leaders who made the most lavish promises imaginable. Government would be reduced by a quarter! Shutdowns would happen! The nation would be saved by transformational change! As Steven Bilakovics writes in his book “Democracy Without Politics,” “even as we expect ever less of democracy we apparently expect ever more from democracy.”


This anti-political political ethos produced elected leaders of jaw-dropping incompetence. Running a government is a craft, like carpentry. But the new Republican officials did not believe in government and so did not respect its traditions, its disciplines and its craftsmanship. They do not accept the hierarchical structures of authority inherent in political activity.

In his masterwork, “Politics as a Vocation,” Max Weber argues that the pre-eminent qualities for a politician are passion, a feeling of responsibility and a sense of proportion. A politician needs warm passion to impel action but a cool sense of responsibility and proportion to make careful decisions in a complex landscape.

If a politician lacks the quality of detachment — the ability to let the difficult facts of reality work their way into the mind — then, Weber argues, the politician ends up striving for the “boastful but entirely empty gesture.” His work “leads nowhere and is senseless.”

Welcome to Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and the Freedom Caucus.

Really, have we ever seen bumbling on this scale, people at once so cynical and so naïve, so willfully ignorant in using levers of power to produce some tangible if incremental good? These insurgents can’t even acknowledge democracy’s legitimacy — if you can’t persuade a majority of your colleagues, maybe you should accept their position. You might be wrong!

People who don’t accept democracy will be bad at conversation. They won’t respect tradition, institutions or precedent. These figures are masters at destruction but incompetent at construction.

These insurgents are incompetent at governing and unwilling to be governed. But they are not a spontaneous growth. It took a thousand small betrayals of conservatism to get to the dysfunction we see all around."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/opinion/the-republicans-incompetence-caucus.html?_r=0

Limbaugh was just taking this apart on air.

I love how the Dems are cranking up the rhetoric about how the Republican party is in the midst of a civil war...

While Hillary is close to losing her lead in the Democrat Presidential Race to an Independent.

Over the last 20 years or so, the far right has morphed into some sort of flat earth society, where facts don't matter and whose idea of civil discourse is the conservative infotainment echo chamber. The problem is that the country needs a conservative party fit for governing as a counter balance to liberal overreach. Sadly, the "Freedom Caucus" et. al. is simply too full of crackpots to fulfill this role.

On the whole, the country is moving forward. More opportunities for women and minorities, a retreat from fruitless, interventionist foreign policy, a realization of the fragility of the environment, and the understanding that .gov plays an important and constructive role, are all good.

Unfortunately, the right wing insists on adhering to voodoo economics and some sort of weird 1950's fantasy view of an America that never really was. Until that changes, they are doomed to become ever more isolated, talking among themselves as the rest of the Country moves on, only mentioning them in the context of a joke.

That would be a good argument if the "extreme right" had been in control of the country over the past 2 decades.

But it hasn't.

The decline of America over the past 2 decades has occurred under the watch of the Progressives and their moderate toadies in the GOP.

The real problem that the Eric308's of the world are having is,...fewer and fewer people are buying into their bullshit.

The worm is turning and they don't like it.

Years ago, David Brooks was actually somewhat conservative. Now he's just another New York Times writer and a wannabe social scientist.

Socialism isn't progress; neither is disarming the law abiding, nor unrestrained growth of government. Making people dependent on government is not progress. And preferential treatment of any race or religion, regardless of past history, is not progress. Degrading religion and morality does nothing to benefit society, either.

Progress will occur when we systematically start addressing these chronic problems, in a meaningful way. So maybe conservatives are the real progressives.

(If that doesn't sound too Gus-like)

Brooks? A Conservative? What a joke. He never has been. David Brooks has always been a stealth liberal attack dog.

Sounds like he is talking about the progressive fascists.

Fair amount of truth to Brooks and Eric308's comments. Elections are won in the middle and countries are governed from the middle. Far right and far left are just distractions. You could further conservative values with moderate conservative leadership than far right leadership. Why scare of the votes you need and make yourself repugnant to 50 percent of the electorate.

Moderate pigs could get fat while far right hogs would get slaughtered... the next election.

Nothing "Gus like" about your post. It is a well written rebuttal to Eric 308, who, by the way, just revealed himself to be be an idiot.

Yep. Unfortunately, representatives are elected by gerrymandered districts, so the Democrats will have a difficult time regaining the House. Could be a chance at getting control of the Senate as lots of now Republican held are at risk. One can hope. Unless the far right is marginalized by the rest of the House, Congress will be dysfunctional, even destructive. National offices are a different matter, I don't see any Republican with a legitimate shot at the White House. Thank God.

Translation:

Blah blah (some communist chit) blah blah blah (some more communist chit) blah blah BLAH (wrapping up with yet some more communist chit).

You don't know if your batteries are wired in series or parallel, do ya.
Let alone know which end of your dill doe is in your arse.

JFC
I read it 3 times and it just keeps getting stupider.

And YOU!

You don't need batteries.

You have one end of the paddle down your throat and the big end in your ass.

How you did that without breaking it in half first I don't want to know.

If someone can read that Brooks column and not conclude a Trump wrecking ball is healthy, I'm not sure there is anything left to say.

Only missed 2 words..