The petulant child-like behavior of Republicans continues, and so does my writing about it. The consequences are just too profound to ignore.
What we are witnessing is the breakdown of the social contract that once held our political system together. It is the result of a nearly five year campaign by extremist Republicans to de-legitimize this president. It started in the Senate when Mitch McConnell got his caucus to oppose everything President Obama proposed, even if they were once for it. Now it has moved to the House, and the anarchists have taken over.
Call it what you will, but I call what they are doing the equivalent of a non-violent political coup, and I do not mean for my words to be taken as hyperbolic. What is going on is a Republican effort to run the government by refusing to let it function unless they do. They cannot depose Obama, so they have decided to depose the political rules that make our political system work – albeit haltingly at times.
Good will, fair play, the acceptance of majority rule, belief in the necessity of government, a respect for the three federal branches of authority (Senate, House, Supreme Court) and for the rule of law, these are the qualities that have sustained us until now. But absent a passionate belief in these principles our nation cannot survive as we know it.
Republican extremists and the citizen extremists who elected them don’t believe in these principles. Thus, they should get nothing from this crisis. They deserve nothing. What they do deserve is our contempt, Indeed, if they are honestly “listening to the American people,” that is the message they will hear!
linnposts.com 
Would you please remove me from your distribution list. I am one of the petulant Republicans you refer to and I find your blog posts extremely insulting. Thank you. Lisa Cohen.
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If representative democracy has such a fatal flaw as to allow this then perhaps it needs to be replaced by direct democracy whereby every issue is put to the body politic for a vote, the government simply administers the majority’s choices. The most successful such system I know is Switzerland, 140 years and running.
I’m not sure that would be better in this country, given our history with regard to human rights and discrimination. Up until fairly recently a majority opposed full rights for LGBT people. Had there been a direct democratic vote on their rights, it would not have passed. We cannot leave human rights up to majority rule. At the very least, such a transition would require a great deal of cultural change first.
You make an important point, but in the end Majority rule is the way democracy functions. When discrimination exists, such as in the instance you note, the courts must right the wrong. Civil disobedience can bring attention to the injustice, but in the end a law must be repealed by majority rule or the courts have to render it unconstitutional. All I am suggesting is that in this instance extremist Republicans are refusing to accept the majority decision in the last election and in the Congress as well instead of using the given process for changing a law endemic to our form of government.