Republicans: The Grand Old Party of Gridlock

When a writer from the American Enterprise Institute throws the Republican Party under the proverbial bus, it catches one’s attention.Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution have written a book called “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism” (Amazon). From this book, they’ve put together a short essay which lays the blame on the current gridlock in Washington squarely on the Republicans.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

The article goes on from there and it is a must read for you this morning.