And Here We Go

Today the government ended its three year streak of feigning action by just calling it quits and ending the ruse; the government has formally shut down meaning essential services will be delayed or disrupted, and potentially imperiling our already fragile and tepid economic recovery.

How did we get here, we must be asking ourselves. The last time such an event happened I was nine years old so it is hard for me to put it in historical context, but I'm certainly not at a loss to explain last night's debacle. In fact, it can be summed up succinctly in only three words: tea party Republicans.

There isn't really anything new here for me to say that hasn't been pointed out by any astute commentator and by many Republicans themselves. The tea party crusaders are not responsible legislators. They're not really legislators at all, and extrapolating on their behavior in Congress they probably aren't responsible in other realms either.

I'd like to try to lampoon the tea party, but I find all this discouraging, and besides John Stewart is funnier than I am. What is more interesting is to try to understand the dynamic of the tea party and why the ideological extremes that always exist within politics have managed to entirely co-opt one of our two major parties.

The issue here is that the tea party crusaders are just that, crusaders. Trapped within the right-wing echo chamber these people have shown a fanatical commitment to their ideas that is immune to reason or fact. Their ideological "live free or die" battle against Obamacare doesn't address any of the real issues with the laws, nor does it acknowledge any of the good ideas within the law. It paints a picture of this fight being an end-of-days type battle for the very existence of America, and the tea party is so convinced that Obamacare will ruin us - without any valid argument to back that claim - that they view actual harmful actions like a government shutdown or a default as being hiccups along our route to the ultimate destruction that awaits in the form of the Affordable Care Act.

This severe lack of critical thinking and unwillingness or incapability to be objective has led the tea party to believe that they are 100% right about the disaster of Obamacare and that America supports this ideological crusade. Both of these beliefs are fantasies. Obamacare might not be as great as many of us hope, but it certainly is not akin to Doomsday, and any and every reliable poll shows that the American public blames Republicans for denying us essential services to fight a battle lost four years ago. They don't see that while the American public is skeptical of Obamacare - and rightfully so - that we don't believe it has or will derailed the country. In fact, we are far more inclined to believe it is the tea party who is derailing the country. The facts around the law and the polling are public, but the tea party denies them nonetheless to the detriment of the country and to the chagrin of the moderates within their party. Rather than examination, thinking, analysis, and new ideas, Republicans cling to their shield of faith that Obamacare will kill us all. They are right in their own minds and nothing can change that.

Ultimately this must and will change. The party has already ceased to be a nationally viable alternative to Democrats, and while the political tides ebb and flow, the tea party will have to implode before people consider Republicans on a national level again. Their thin majority in the House would already have fractured if Boehner had allowed a vote on the Senate's spending bill, but Boehner is big on ego and low on leadership, so he followed his ambition to be Speaker of the House and let his radicals walk him into a suicide stand rather than allowing a vote that would have funded the government but marred him in the eyes of the tea party. Scattered and gerrymandered Republican districts around the country may be enough to keep some crazies in the House and prevent us from making progress, but they can't be nationally viable. Right now, as the President has pointed out, one faction of one party in one half of one branch of Congress is all that stands between America and forward motion. Does the tea party really believe that this inglorious stand will allow them to take control of other branches of government and undo what has been done legally? Do they think that a fight to the death that punishes Americans will lead us to rally around their cause and grant them the power to actually govern when they have already so poorly squandered their first shot? Sadly, they probably do believe this, and sadly for the rest of us, they will continue to act on those beliefs.

So here we go. We are temporarily without government and perhaps only a few weeks away from defaulting on our national debt. The jury on Obamacare may still be out, but there is only one group responsible for the totally reckless and harmful (in)action of our government: the tea party.