Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

[David Morris]

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention
to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt
ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican
Party is so full of lunatics. The crackpot outliers of two decades ago
have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a
leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry,
Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory
now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent
that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional
staff member on Capitol Hill.

[...]

Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral
actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible
actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the
hostage, while the former does not care.

[...]

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the
Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional
political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like
an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian
parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications,
none of them pleasant.

[...]

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me
candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and
disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from
doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability
rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an
institution of government, the party that is programmatically against
government would come out the relative winner.

[...]

I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans,
like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to
this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven
incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them.
And, in truth, I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having
gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of
their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder value,"
the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up
their pensions and benefits, too.