Goodbye to All That

This is getting a lot of play on the blogs, but if you've been ignoring politics for the holiday weekend, it's the one thing you missed that you definitely read. Mike Lofgren, a veteran Congressional staffer reflects on why he left the GOP after 28 years on The Hill. This part was especially telling:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner. [...]

Thus far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

But there's so much more. Seriously, read the whole thing