With a good part of the federal government now closed for business, the pathologies driving it are too obvious to ignore. The diagnosis begins with the fact that there is no partisan argument this time about overall federal spending. The White House and congressional Democrats have accepted the arbitrary cuts of the sequester process, despite evidence that they are slowing the economy. Instead, the rightwing of the House GOP is holding normal government operations hostage to a variety of demands tied the Affordable Care Act.
Obamacare has been a festering focus of Tea Partiers since 2010, when its passage helped elect a number of them to Congress. Three years later, their continuing single-mindedness about those reforms has begun to look like a pathological obsession. Too strong? Their threats to close down Washington unless President Obama agrees to give up his signature achievement – and their deluded confidence that they can bend him to their will -- have been utterly unaffected by not only the results of the 2012 elections, but also by the prevailing consensus that their strategy will cost the GOP even more in 2014.
This week, the pathology spread to Republican leaders. Since Tea Party members make up less than one-quarter of the House GOP and an even smaller share in the Senate, they always need support from their more moderate colleagues and Party leaders to carry out their threats. Those leaders and colleagues have for weeks publicly opposed the Tea Party strategy – that is, until this past weekend. After months of being held hostage themselves to Tea Party threats of insurrection and primary challenges, House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and most of their associates have now identified with their captors and adopted their worldview. In short, they’re suffering from a political version of “Stockholm Syndrome.” If they don’t recover quickly, much of the national government could remain closed for a long time.
This post was originally published in Dr. Shapiro's blog.