KRUGMAN: "Don’t cry for Mr. Boehner-Cry for America"

[kpete]

The Blackmail Caucus, a.k.a. the Republican Party
Paul Krugman
SEPT. 28, 2015

John Boehner was a terrible, very bad, no good speaker of the House. Under his leadership, Republicans pursued an unprecedented strategy of scorched-earth obstructionism, which did immense damage to the economy and undermined America’s credibility around the world.

Still, things could have been worse. And under his successor they almost surely will be worse. Bad as Mr. Boehner was, he was just a symptom of the underlying malady, the madness that has consumed his party.
...

All in all, Republicans during the Boehner era fully justified the characterization offered by the political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, in their book “It’s Even Worse Than You Think.” Yes, the G.O.P. has become an “insurgent outlier” that is “ideologically extreme” and “unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science.” And Mr. Boehner did nothing to fight these tendencies. On the contrary, he catered to and fed the extremism.

So why is he out? Basically because the obstructionism failed.
...

In other words, despite all Mr. Boehner’s efforts to bring him down, Mr. Obama is looking more and more like a highly successful president. For the base, which has never considered Mr. Obama legitimate — polling suggests that many Republicans believe that he wasn’t even born here — this is a nightmare. And all too many ambitious Republican politicians are willing to tell the base that it’s Mr. Boehner’s fault, that he just didn’t try blackmail hard enough.


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More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/opinion/paul-krugman-the-blackmail-caucus-aka-the-republican-party.html?

[liberal N proud]

1. Almost surely will be worse

Believe it or not, Boehner kept it from total meltdown. Now the crazies will run the asylum.

[yodermon]

2. Gerrymandering is the root cause of this.

Ultimately that will have to be addressed because it is literally thwarting democracy.

[jwirr]

5. You are correct about how gerrymandering has effected the

makeup of the House. The only way to address this now is to make sure we support that we elect Democratic governors and state legislators. We need to change not only DC but also as many states as we can.

They will be involved in drawing the districts after the next census.

[Act_of_Reparation]

3. It is rather amazing Krugman still has a job.

While virtually every other mainstream commentator is compelled by corporate interests to maintain the fiction that "both sides do it", Krugman is the only one with the stendinz to say no, the Republican Party has completely lost its fucking mind.

[joeybee12]

4. Quite frankly, if Obama had been impeached that would not have satisfied the lunatics...

And that's scary...they're out for blood.