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A comment I posted to the NY Times editorial, "The March to Anarchy" [View all]
This is the text of a comment I posted last night to a very good New York Times editorial, "The March to Anarcy". The comment seems to have struck quite a chord with many readers, so I thought I would share it here.
Mark Kessinger
[font color="gray"]New York, NY[/font]
If the GOP insists on an economic civil war, then I sincerely hope President Obama gives it to them. The notion that a faction within a party that controls only one house of Congress -- and that only by virtue of gerrymandering -- has a right to dictate policy or legislation, when it hasn't been able to be sufficiently successful at the polls to enable it to pass its agenda through legitimate legislative means, by repeatedly engaging in blackmail and extortion, MUST be stopped, whatever the cost. Republicans seem to be under the very mistaken idea that elections only have consequences when Republicans prevail, and that they, and they alone, are entitled to govern. That is in direct conflict with the system of government our founders created. And no, the claim that "both sides have engaged in this sort of thing" is not valid. Sure, both parties have, in the past, engaged in targeted resistance to particular pieces of legislation, or to a particular nominee. But at no other point in this country's history has an opposition party engaged in such total, across-the-board obstruction, nor tried to force its agenda by extorting the country with the threat of deliberately wrecking the nation's economy if they didn't get their way. That dubious distinction goes solely to today's Republican Party. It is nothing less than economic terrorism, and the President should deal with it the way the U.S. government officially deals with terrorists of any kind: by refusing to negotiate.
Sept. 19, 2013 at 7:16 a.m.
[font color="gray"]New York, NY[/font]
If the GOP insists on an economic civil war, then I sincerely hope President Obama gives it to them. The notion that a faction within a party that controls only one house of Congress -- and that only by virtue of gerrymandering -- has a right to dictate policy or legislation, when it hasn't been able to be sufficiently successful at the polls to enable it to pass its agenda through legitimate legislative means, by repeatedly engaging in blackmail and extortion, MUST be stopped, whatever the cost. Republicans seem to be under the very mistaken idea that elections only have consequences when Republicans prevail, and that they, and they alone, are entitled to govern. That is in direct conflict with the system of government our founders created. And no, the claim that "both sides have engaged in this sort of thing" is not valid. Sure, both parties have, in the past, engaged in targeted resistance to particular pieces of legislation, or to a particular nominee. But at no other point in this country's history has an opposition party engaged in such total, across-the-board obstruction, nor tried to force its agenda by extorting the country with the threat of deliberately wrecking the nation's economy if they didn't get their way. That dubious distinction goes solely to today's Republican Party. It is nothing less than economic terrorism, and the President should deal with it the way the U.S. government officially deals with terrorists of any kind: by refusing to negotiate.
Sept. 19, 2013 at 7:16 a.m.
15 replies
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