re: #7 lawhawk

The cadre of 30-40 extremists could be birthers, racists, extremists, or both. They’re dedicated to destroying the Obama Administration by any means necessary and see this fight as central to their agenda. They don’t view the president as legitimate - that’s a story in and of itself.

Boehner should be drumming these extremists out of the party, but doing so would mean losing control of the party. So, we’ve got the tyranny of the minority in effect where these extremists are running the party.

I keep going back to that quote from a Tea Partier that appeared in the WaPo interview with Paul Stebbins the other day:

Look, I had the chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee, Fred Upton, tell me that he got into an argument with one of these young guys on his committee about the defunding of Affordable Care Act. Well the argument was ‘look, Energy and Commerce had 50 hearings on that bill. Like it or not, it passed. The president signed it. The Supreme Court upheld it. So you don’t get to pick a bill you don’t like and link it to the entire financial well being of the United States.’ Well the response is, ‘I didn’t come here to govern.’

Absolutely chilling. It’s hard to be hopeful for the future when I read things like that.