When ideology trumps good government

The other day, Steve Benen wrote a great column about how, for Republicans, ideology trumps good government.

For Republicans, it doesn’t work quite that way — they have ideological ideals that outweigh evidence. GOP leaders could be shown incontrovertible evidence that the most effective methods of creating jobs and improving the economy are aid to states, infrastructure investment, unemployment insurance, and food stamps, and they’d still say spending is bad and tax cuts are good. Why? Because their ideology and commitment to brand identity dictates those answers.

Because the Republicans are in a phase where testing purity to their ideology is paramount, they are - and will be - unable to govern. The question we should be asking is whether - other than a compromised budget deal - the Republicans have been able to pass any legislation since they won back control of the House? If voters want action on things like jobs and the economy, or anything else for that matter, the Republicans are completely unable to produce results.

This should also be a lesson to those on the left who tend to want to see purity to Democratic ideals from our party. One only has to remember the "kill the bill" contingent on health care reform. Because the public option was not going to pass the Senate, these folks preferred to let the bill die and loose the opportunity to insure an additional 35 million Americans (not to mention reduce costs as we're just beginning to see happen). These are the same people who would have wanted to "kill" the original Social Security bill because everyone wasn't covered or the Civil Rights Act because some businesses were exempt.

The other day I was talking to one of these folks on another blog. S/he said that if Congress failed to pass the debt limit because Democrats wouldn't compromise on spending, we could blame it on the Republicans. Not only is this stupid politics (history shows that Presidents are usually held accountable for those kind of failures), the very idea of letting the entire global economy collapse in order to score some political points is nothing short of bizarre.

This is why I'm so grateful that Obama is our President today. I am confident that no matter how unreasonable these people on both the left and right can be, he'll continue to push the ball down the field at every opportunity. After all, we should have learned by now that life is a game of inches.