Behind all the drama and wailing

I'll admit that right now I'm having trouble paying much attention to any news except the unfolding drama about raising the national debt limit. Of course, its an issue of high importance to anyone who cares about the American (or global) economy. But as we watch it unfold, there are lessons about our leaders (or lack thereof when it comes to Republicans) and the overall state of our political system to be observed. In other words, I don't often find myself locked into needing to know the specific details of who proposed what and who said what to whom in heated negotiations (although on the later, there are some fascinating stories this morning about what happened yesterday afternoon). I like looking for the themes and what all this is telling us about the big picture.

In that context, I find two things particularly interesting.

First is something I read about the Republican caucus meeting on Tuesday morning as reported by National Review Online. Remember, this was just before Senator McConnell threw in the towel with his proposal.

I'm sure that most of this is reported with emphasis the Republicans want to see in the media. But in truth, that just makes it all the more damning. Here are some examples:

Boehner emphasized his support for a balanced-budget amendment, which one House GOP aide tells us was a signal to the conservative groups within the conference that he was taking a hard turn away from the White House and toward them, embracing an initiative that they have long championed. “I want to be clear,” Boehner reportedly said, “I support a balanced-budget amendment, and we’re going to fight for one.”

For his part, Cantor made clear that he did not view the White House as “serious,” since they wanted over a trillion in revenues added to the baseline of any bargain. “We have the same principles, they have not changed,” he told the audience. “If the Democrats continue to insist on tax increases, there is no viable path forward. We are where we are.”...

One notable questioner came at the end: Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.), one of the most high-profile House conservatives, praised Cantor and Boehner, telling the audience that they exposed Obama’s tax-and-spend philosophy. He urged the conference to stick with the leaders and continue to confront the administration...

“Out of today’s discussion it’s clear that the conference is unified behind the need for a balanced-budget amendment.” Graves said the House vote on a balance-budget amendment, scheduled for the week of July 25, would send an important signal to the White House...

Another House Republican, however, thinks that Boehner knows exactly what he is doing. “He is slowly drawing Obama out,” the congressman says. “Remember, Boehner knows that this is not just about the debt limit. He is making Obama articulate his positions, now, so if we come back in one week, or in six months, we can read back his comments and start to move reforms forward, perhaps after all of this drama has passed.”

Seriously? I don't know what universe these Republicans are living in, but it certainly has no relation whatsoever to the one I inhabit. That is the very problem I think President Obama is trying to tackle when he takes on our political polarization. We can't even begin to solve the big issues that face us today when we don't even inhabit the same world.

Secondly, the other day Harold Meyerson took what is going on in these negotiations and got right to the root of the problem.

Republicans, to be sure, have long waged a war on government, but only now has it become an apocalyptic and total war. At its root, I suspect, is the fear and loathing that rank-and-file right-wingers feel toward what their government, and their nation, is inexorably becoming: multiracial, multicultural, cosmopolitan and now headed by a president who personifies those qualities. That America is also downwardly mobile is a challenge for us all, but for the right, the anxiety our economy understandably evokes is augmented by the politics of racial resentment and the fury that the country is no longer only theirs. That’s not a country whose government they want to pay for — and if the apocalypse befalls us, they seem to have concluded, so much the better.

Bada-f*cking-bing on that one Harold. What more can I say?