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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Robert B. Reich
The Republican crack-up threatens the future of the
The crack-up isn't just Romney-the-smooth versus Gingrich-the-bomb-thrower. Not just House Speaker John Boehner, who keeps making agreements he can't keep, versus House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who keeps making trouble he can't control. And not just the
The underlying conflict lies deep in the nature and structure of the
As political analyst Michael Lind has noted, today's
It's no coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most
This "no-compromise" right wing of today's
Through most of these years, though, the
But after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as the South began its long shift toward the
The watershed event was Newt Gingrich's takeover of the House in 1995. Suddenly, it seemed, the
Almost overnight Washington was transformed from a place where legislators tried to find common ground to a war zone. Compromise was replaced by brinkmanship, bargaining by obstructionism, normal legislative maneuvering by threats to close down government -- which occurred at the end of 1995.
Before then, when I'd testified on the Hill as Secretary of Labor, I had come in for tough questioning from Republican senators and representatives -- which was their job. After January 1995, I was verbally assaulted. "Mr. Secretary, are you a socialist?" I recall one of them asking.
The first concrete sign that no-compromise radicals might take over the
America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way -- seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010.
Newt Gingrich's recent assertion that public officials aren't bound to follow the decisions of federal courts is in keeping with the tradition.
This no-compromise radicalism is dangerous for the
It's also dangerous for America. We need two political parties solidly grounded in the realities of governing. Our democracy can't work any other way.
AMERICAN POLITICS
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The Republican Crack-Up | Politics
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