Is all bleak in the Republican Tea Party-dominated Republican House’s government shut down — and the real threat that Republicans will hurl the United States into a debt default? Andrew Sullivan is not optimistic at all:
The Republicans, alas, have two advantages that stem from their radicalism (yes, in a classic piece of total projection, they are the real Alinskyites and Obama is the real conservative). To any neutral observer – say, anyone outside the US – they are easily the crazier ones.
And they are holding a gun to the head of the American government and the economy. Do I believe they would happily explode this country’s credit and economy rather than have to go through the difficult task of building an actual majority in the country for their agenda? Yes, I’m afraid I do. I’ve been waiting to see some scintilla of resistance to ever further radicalization, and I see none whatsoever.
Further down:
So there are two choices, it seems to me. Obama can invoke emergency executive authority to protect the unquestionable credit of the United States and dare the Courts to over-rule him and the Congress to impeach him. Or Obama can give in to what is an unbelievably outrageous tactic – and try to salvage some kind of interim budget deal that will raise the debt ceiling in return for some kind of Republican trophy. That would be a surrender of profound implications for future presidents – yes, Republican ones too – and fundamentally alter our political system to reward the kind of blackmail we’re now witnessing. But it would end the immediate emergency and remove the blackmail – for a while, until the GOP insists that, even though they lost the last election, they have a right to run the country permanently, regardless of electoral outcomes.
Better perhaps for the president to act to save the economy and the world in a truly perilous self-induced crisis than to allow this rogue faction to concoct a Lehman-style collapse to the power of 10 and then blame him for it. It remains staggering and outrageous that this is where we are. But if one faction of one party controls the House, and it goes completely rogue, as it has, then what can a sane president do?
Sullivan is correct: we may be about to cross over into a major change in centuries of American democracy.
If we haven’t crossed it already.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.