Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

Americans continue to wonder just how extreme the Right Wing can get. Demonizing private citizens for having the nerve to express their opinions to Congress, defending mysogynist drug addicted radio hatemongers, trying to help the Catholic Church impose its religious dogma on individual employees, and turning anything the President says or does, no matter how noncontroversial, into another "crisis" have become the norm. A traitorous disgraceful torturer is not only elected to Congress but goes full blown Joe McCarthy with paranoid conspiracy theories about communists, and the Right remains silent. Americans who have worked hard their entire lives are cast as "thugs" because they want to protect their rights. Americans desperately seeking jobs are cast as criminals and threatened with drug testing while the Right continues to block every attempt to create the jobs they need. And still more and more of America's wealth finds its way into Cayman Islands bank accounts. It's clear that the Right Wing has lost any respect it might once have had for the Constitution and the history of this nation. The only remaining question is why anyone who claims to respect the Constitution gives the Republicans the time of day, much less a vote.

Article excerpt follows:

Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein
April 27, 2012

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are "78 to 81" Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it's not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West's comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It's not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

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.

"Both sides do it" or "There is plenty of blame to go around" are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.