GOP Nervous Breakdown Brings Out The Full Driftglass Everywhere

No one is going to listen, but still.

From Paul Krugman in that Big City Newspaper:

It’s All Benghazi

OCT. 9, 2015

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Still, [Kevin McCarthy] finished off his chances by admitting — boasting, actually — that the endless House hearings on Benghazi had nothing to do with national security, that they were all about inflicting political damage on Hillary Clinton.

But we all knew that, didn’t we?

I often wonder about commentators who write about things like those hearings as if there were some real issue involved, who keep going on about the Clinton email controversy as if all these months of scrutiny had produced any evidence of wrongdoing, as opposed to sloppiness.

Surely they have to know better, whether they admit it to themselves or not. And surely the long history of Clinton nonscandals and retracted allegations — remember, there never was anything to the Whitewater accusations — should serve as a cautionary tale.

Somehow, though, politicians who pretend to be concerned about issues, but are obviously just milking those issues for political gain, keep getting a free pass. And it’s not just a Clinton story...

Of course everyone knew. But our elite media would clearly rather feed their first born though a wheat thresher than open their Todd-holes and speak this simple and self-evident truth. Finding out the details of their Faustian bargains -- names, dates and amounts -- would change the world.

Alert Reader "il" sends this along ... "In short sentences, and small words, Steve Benen on the Maddowblog points out THE major political story the elite media doesn’t want to cover. drifty..you’ll find this very familiar..."

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For several years, much of the political establishment has fiercely resisted the idea that congressional Republicans have been radicalized. A wide variety of Beltway pundits and insiders have even blamed President Obama for not successfully compromising and striking deals with the radicalized GOP – if only the president would lead like a leading leader, Republicans would transform into constructive, mainstream policymakers. This is a problem, we’ve been told repeatedly, that schmoozing can solve.

The lazy punditry was wrong. Since early 2011, legislative productivity has reached depths without modern precedent. The list of major legislative accomplishments is effectively empty. Bills have routinely been brought to the floor for passage, only to have the GOP leadership discover their own members are defying their own party’s legislative priorities.

Under Republican leadership – or what passes for “leadership” in 2015 – the legislative branch has careened between hostage standoffs and self-imposed crises, over and over again, to the point that some have begun to see these ridiculous circumstances, never before seen in the American tradition, as the new normal.

And now, House Republicans can’t even elect their own Speaker.

It is, to be sure, a national embarrassment, but it’s also the culmination of years of intensifying extremism. GOP disarray can no longer be ignored, but let’s not pretend it’s unexpected. This motley crew has been held together by smoke and mirrors, when it’s been held together at all.

The Republican establishment is losing its strength and its numbers, while right-wing insurgents, with an insatiable appetite for confrontation, gain influence. The very idea of the House passing meaningful legislation into law anytime soon is laughable.

About a year from now, GOP officials nationwide will ask Americans to give Republicans control over every branch of the government, which at a certain level seems ridiculous – if it’s not altogether clear the Republican Party can still function, how can it be trusted to govern responsibly?

Little by little.

Little by little.