Running the Asylum

While Thomas Friedman's article is now a few weeks old, his message is a good one. The Republican Party has an inmate problem. Republican politicians are horrible, put they didn't magically appear, they were elected, and for that, we must blame the Republican electorate.

I've said countless times that it's not that all Republican ideas are bad - though many are - it's that the party is currently caught in a moral and intellectual void in which they are incapable of presenting forward-thinking ideas, and instead cling to outdated ideology and too often lies and stupidity. Republicans could propose market-oriented solutions to address climate change, but instead they deny that the world is getting warmer. The Republican base has been lied to by its politicians, and has ensconced itself in an alternative reality choosing to get its information from outlets like Fox News and people like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. Instead of finding a way to make their good ideas relevant, they have chosen to to construct a world in which facts and data are irrelevant.

This has disastrous consequences for our country. The Republican refusal to cope with facts has put all the onus on Democrats to govern, but that is neither ideal nor possible. America would be better off if we were able to have a debate about alternative proposals for how to address our nation's problems, but instead we are stuck with Democrats trying to push their ideas through a Republican House that won't even vote on those ideas, and a Republican Party that can't even bring its own ideas to the table. The recent bill to raise taxes on the wealthy included some limited Republican priorities, for example keeping the estate tax at levels lower than those proposed by Democrats, but did not include any spending cuts. Why? Because Republicans didn't propose any! Rather than proposing spending cuts, Mitch McConnell put the onus to do so on President Obama. Would I like to see the President propose meaningful cuts? Of course! But he didn't campaign on that, and the American people did not elect him because he promised cuts. If Republicans want their ideas to be included in laws, they need to actually have ideas, present them, and make a case for why they are necessary. Instead, Republicans have abdicated this responsibility, and sit grumpily on the sidelines whining. Note to Republicans: if you want to have a say in how the nation is governed, you need to have ideas about what we can do to fix our problems. Be solutions-oriented.

Until the Republican party acknowledges reality and begins proposing solutions it will be doomed. In the wake of their crushing defeat in the November elections, much was made of whether Republicans can recover politically, specifically in terms of the demographics shift America is experiencing. But demographics don't determine the fate of the Republican Party, reality does. And Republicans have done a notoriously pathetic job of accepting and addressing reality. They either cannot or will not analyze Democratic proposals on merit and counter with their own ideas, rather they have embraced the notion that everything President Obama says is an attempt to strip us of our freedoms and make America socialist or something like that. They cannot fathom a deal that would attempt to address the budget deficit even if it includes $10 worth of spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. Their mantra has become "my way or the highway," even though the Republican "my way" isn't reflective of the complex world in which we live and the complex problems our nation faces.

I will continue to lambast Republican politicians for espousing policies that fail to address our nation's problems, but the Republican Party's issue is that the inmates are running the asylum. The Republican base is out of touch with reality and no one thinks that is a problem. If that doesn't change the Republican party is doomed, and we should all wish for a healthy and sensible Republican party rather than its disintegration.