Ideologues out of control

Harold Meyerson has written a great column today.

To watch Republicans in action today, in Washington and in legislatures around the country, is to be reminded of Casey Stengel’s amazed query to the 1962 Mets, whom he had the cosmic misfortune to manage: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

In California, in Minnesota and here on Capitol Hill, Republican legislators in divided governments seem incapable of taking half or even three-fourths of a loaf — of recognizing when they’ve won. By holding out for more when they’ve already attained plenty, they run the risk of coming away with nothing for themselves or inflicting avoidable calamity on everyone else. As Daniel Bell once said of American socialists, they act as if they’re in but not of the world.

He goes on to site specific examples by today's Republicans. And then ends with this:

When zeal runs amok, the sense of proportion suffers. Today’s Republicans remind me of some leaders of the American Communist Party whom I got to know decades ago, after they’d left the fold. “We believed in the party line, in its infallibility, so completely,” one ex-commie told me, “that we’d forget the larger strategy for the momentary tactic.” So it was with Communists of yore; so it is with Republicans today.

Anyone who has read both of President Obama's books knows that it was this extreme adherence to ideology by his father and the 60's leftists that propelled Obama to be the pragmatic he is today.

But as we're seeing now, many in today's left - rather than offering something different - are urging our politicians to meet this Republican intransigence with the same from our side. That is a bad move both politically and practically.

When it comes to politics, as we've seen here in Minnesota, it simply encourages people to say "a pox on both your houses." On the practical side, when the stalemate happens, it is always the most vulnerable in our midst who pay the highest price. Guess who gets hurt the worst when government shuts down or the global economy goes into chaos. That's what the ideologues on either side are asking for. I understand that the Republicans don't care about that. But as progressives, caring for the least of these is supposed to be one of our highest priorities.