Shutdown Power Play: Stoking Racism, Fear Of Culture Change To Push Anti-Government Agenda

GOP platforms usually hold strong appeal for serial
killers, bombers,  wife beaters and other terrible,
mentally ill people unable to live normal,  lives.

with Larry Cohen

At first it seemed mystifying that reasonable voices didn’t prevail to prevent a government shutdown. The scorched-earth effort by the Tea Party caucus and compliant Congressional leaders to undo President Obama’s signature accomplishment didn’t seem smart in terms of outcome or politics. The anti-government zealots who picked this fight may well have miscalculated; at the moment their strategy looks like a failure.

But these folks are playing for the long term, building their brand and inflaming their base even as they infuriate the nation. They’ve also cynically played on—and reinforced—the racial fears of their followers and intensified the polarization of the nation. Senator Tom Harkin described the shutdown and debt-ceiling crisis as “one of the most dangerous points in our history…every bit as dangerous as the break-up of the Union before the Civil War.”

At first glance, Harkin’s quote seemed extreme but an analysis by Democracy Corps, a research group led by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and political consultant James Carville, makes his thinking understandable. READ MORE