The Grand Rapids Press, which endorsed Mitt Romney, condemned "irresponsible GOP zealots" for the shut down. The paper added:
If Obamacare is the "train wreck" opponents claim it will be, voters soon will have the opportunity to choose leaders with better ideas, at the mid-term elections in 2014 and the presidential election in 2016. That's called democracy.
It is not just Obamacare but also democracy that is under attack by the GOP zealots. In his brilliant and prescient 1995 piece American Weimar, Steve Erickson explained that
History is clear that democracy cannot long navigate a sea of national rage. Untempered by rationale and open-mindedness, fury eventually consumes democracy rather than nourishes it, because it overwhelms our tolerance, our willingness to be reasonably informed, our determination to hold ourselves accountable for what we decide. Most important, it overwhelms our basic faith in democracy itself.
That is what is happening in America today. Tea Party representatives and their members still refuse to accept their defeat in 2012. The voters were simply wrong. To paraphrase Erickson who wrote with respect to the Republican's refusal to accept Clinton, "in essence, the Right argues that a democracy that produces an [Obama] presidency invalidates itself" and they are free to ignore it.
That is what they have done. Rather than recalibrate their message to win wider support, Republicans have demonstrated their disdain for the voters by (i) seeking to revive Jim Crow voter suppression laws to prevent future Democratic victories and (ii) now shutting down the government.
Coldberg King calls them the New Confederacy, explaining they are
as churlish toward President Obama as the Old Confederacy was to Lincoln, [yet] it has accomplished what its predecessor could not: It has shut down the federal government, and without even firing a weapon . . . .Its members are as extreme as their ideological forebears. It matters not to them, as it didn't to the Old Confederacy, whether they ultimately go down in flames.
The New Confederacy is costing the American economy $2.1 billion a week and may soon threaten our national security as law enforcement personnel are furloughed.
For five years the Republicans have waged war against majority rule, triggering Time Magazine's poignant cover. As this crisis continues, it is time for the Republicans to decide whether they will behave as responsible members of the loyal opposition or whether they are simply saboteurs. More importantly, it is time for all Americans -- Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike -- to make note of their choice and hold them accountable. hat this crisis will end promptly and that the Republicans pay dearly for their actions so that no future Congress even contemplates holding the American people hostage again.
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