Conservatives vs. Conservatives

“If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not.  If Responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default.  They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they would be right.” That was no Democrat speaking, but conservative columnist David Brooks in a July 4 column in the NY Times.  

Conservative Washington Post Columnist Kathleen Parker, in the July 10 Washington Post, says that “Voting no may have become the aphrodisiac of small government conservatives, but it is not necessarily an act of bravery of wisdom.  Sometimes it’s just stubborn.”  The GOP have painted themselves into an ideological corner, rigidly declare that all tax cuts are good, all tax increases are bad, dogmatically resisting even the most sensible and painless tax hikes.   

A USA Today editorial indicates that “negotiating with Republicans over taxes has become as futile as trying to bargain with the Taliban over whether girls should be allowed to attend school.”  The GOP’s most conservative members, willing to vote for default under any circumstance, have, as Brooks continues, “no sense of moral decency.  A nation makes a solemn pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money.  But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.” 

Unwilling to accept the logic of compromise, the Republican Party, as Brooks indicates, “may no longer be a normal party,” and is not “a practical, governing alternative.”  Amen.