"The Republican Party is destroying America" [View all]

[babylonsister]

The GOP Is Threatening Murder-Suicide With New Shutdown Warnings
by Kirsten Powers Sep 19, 2013 5:45 AM EDT
If the president refuses to defund Obamacare, House Republicans are happy to retaliate with a government shutdown. What they’re really headed for is complete ruination, says Kirsten Powers.


The Republican Party is destroying America.

Harsh words, yes. But inescapably true. It’s a bit of a murder-suicide. House Republicans’ willingness to lay waste to the country to satisfy their fringiest faction will ultimately guarantee the GOP irrelevancy as a national party, unless they change their ways. In the meantime, they seem determined to take us all down with them.

There isn’t even a feint toward decency. In what has become a recurring nightmare, House Republicans are using budget negotiations to play chicken with the stability of the American economy. This time, they want President Obama to agree to defund his signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act. If he refuses to strangle his own baby in the crib, Republicans are happy to retaliate. They’ll shut down the government. These are not people with whom one can work.

snip//

Said Ornstein: “The bizarreness of this monomaniacal focus on Obamacare, given that it is fundamentally a Republican program from the 1990s mixed in with Romneycare,” says it all. “Obamacare relies on the private sector; there is no public option. That you are willing to bring the country to its knees to sabotage it … just shows this is a party that has gone off the rails.”

Just how damaging have the congressional Republicans been to the country? “If you look at what could have happened in a reasonable political system, with give and take … we would have been on a more robust path to growth,” said Ornstein. “We’ve gone from one credit agency downgrading us to a far greater likelihood that we will default. If sequester continues … it is a cancer eating away at national parks, food safety, basic research … it’s a terrible situation. No matter how much {Republicans} talk about how it was Obama’s idea … the whole idea was to create such awful consequences that no sane person would accept it. But these aren’t sane people.”

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