Steering towards the Rocks 0
In The Seattle Times, Philip Cushman suggests that most analyses of Republicans’ inability to get anything of substance done in spite of a holding a Congressional majority and the Presidency are missing the primary reason. Among the suggested reasons he’s read are that they have lost the ability to govern, are ideologically fragmented, and hampered by Donald Trump’s political inexperience.
He suggests that there is a much more important reason: Republican strategy has shot the party in both feet (emphasis added):
• One, it has exaggerated and twisted basic conservative concepts until they are out of touch with current political challenges. For instance, 19th-century ideas about the wisdom of the unregulated marketplace cannot begin to address the enormous and complex labor, health-care, tax-code, environmental and infrastructure needs of the 21st.
• Two, they have had to mortgage their integrity to the very richest of Americans, who demand tax cuts and devious welfare-for-the-rich and deregulation deals that make any sort of rational and creative legislative response to difficult 21st century challenges impossible to craft.
• Three, they have had to quietly and under cover of code words and stereotypes make common cause with the worst of American culture: racism and xenophobia.
I disagree with his use of the phrase, “has been forced” in the first sentence in the excerpt.
The Republican Party chose this course; the tactics were not forced on it.
The party walked willingly and purposefully into the pit in pursuit of power.
Follow the link for the rest of his article.
