g.o.p

Back in February G. O. P. legislators admitted frankly that they were trying to cripple financial reform by cutting off funding.

Eric Cantor, G. O. P. congressman from Virginia and Republican chief deputy whip: It was almost as if panic had struck the capital.

The same metaphor, it seems to me, might apply to the G. O. P. pursuit of the White House next year.

Yet as I said, the only way to actually believe the modern G. O. P. catechism is to be completely clueless.

But, as I said, his economic doctrine has, in effect, become the official G. O. P. line, despite having been proved utterly wrong by events.

Which brings me to the culpability of those who are only now facing up to the G. O. P. 's craziness.

After all, the G. O. P. isn't interested in helping the economy as long as a Democrat is in the White House.

The debate over financial reform, in which the G. O. P. has taken the side of the bad guys, should be a political winner for Democrats.

Don't pretend to be shocked: you know they're out there, and make up a large share of the G. O. P. caucus.

Within the G. O. P. , willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates, one that Mr. Romney is determined to pass at all costs.

on Monday, The Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G. O. P.

But Mr. Ryan is widely portrayed as an intellectual leader within the G. O. P. , with special expertise on matters of debt and deficits.

Will others in the G. O. P. stand up and say that Mr. Huckabee is wrong, that Medicare needs to know which medical procedures actually work?

For the G. O. P. plan turns out not to be serious at all.

And on matters fiscal, the G. O. P. program is to do almost exactly the opposite of what Mr. Bernanke called for.

But any respite would be only temporary; again, the G. O. P. is just not interested in helping a Democrat govern.

On Saturday, at a G. O. P. rally in Anaheim, Calif. , Palin mockingly noted that you won't find her invoking Mao or Saul Alinsky.

And if Republicans block those proposals, he needs to make a Harry Truman-style campaign against the do-nothing G. O. P.

To their credit, the staffers who wrote that G. O. P. report were clearly aware that the evidence no longer supports their position.

I'll explain in a minute. First, let's talk about the dilemma the G. O. P. faces.

But now the G. O. P. has moved on to an even bigger project: the war on logic.

On this issue, as on many others, the G. O. P. establishment is offering a nearly uniform profile in cowardice.

What all this shows is that the G. O. P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

Yet if you look at the race for the G. O. P. presidential nomination, you have to wonder whether it was a Freudian slip.

Now, there are good reasons to believe that the G. O. P. isn't nearly as willing to burn the house down as it claims.

But the G. O. P. has just demonstrated its willingness to risk financial collapse unless it gets everything its most extreme members want.

If you didn't understand that logic, you might be puzzled by many items in the House G. O. P. proposal.

Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G. O. P. staffers flown in from Washington.

He should have used the moment to explain to Americans what irresponsible cuts the G. O. P. demanded just to keep the government open.

And the president essentially folded, giving the G. O. P. everything it wanted.

Yet the G. O. P. today resists national health care, immigration reform and wants to just drill, baby, drill.

Back in January, Frank Luntz, the G. O. P. strategist, circulated a memo on how to oppose financial reform.

But this complacency misses two important facts about the situation: the extremism of the modern G. O. P.

And G. O. P. leaders have not, of course, called for anything that drastic.

They now have bigger majorities in both houses than the G. O. P. ever achieved in its 12-year reign.

Look at the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House G. O. P. plan.

But while the paranoid style isn't new, its role within the G. O. P. is.

But there's a clear chilling effect when scholars know that they may face witch hunts whenever they say things the G. O. P. doesn't like.

First, let's talk about the dilemma the G. O. P. faces.

But the modern G. O. P. doesn't believe in following normal rules.

And despite repeated failure in practice, it is, more than ever, the official view of the G. O. P.

And the result is that the G. O. P. pays no price for refusing to give an inch.

And it's bad news for the G. O. P.

Last year the G. O. P. pulled off two spectacular examples of bait-and-switch campaigning.

But last year the G. O. P. ran against what it called the "massive Medicare cuts" contained in the health reform law.