Another thought about Portman’s change of heart on gay marriage.

He finally understood and accepted the reasoning for supporting gay marriage only after his son came out as gay. It was only after the specific act he long opposed actually affected his son and his family that Portman came around to supporting gay marriage as a civil right.

That shows a tremendous lack of empathy and sympathy for a whole range of issues - whether it’s the current GOP positions on taxes, health care, and how to best address issues of crime, poverty, and education.

Does this mean that GOPers have to themselves experience poverty or a health care crisis to understand that the system they’re backing and their policy positions are lacking?

Yglesias calls this the politics of narcissism. I don’t think that’s quite right. It’s the politics of myopia. The GOP can’t step outside of itself and understand that it’s proffering policy prescriptions that will do more harm than good to the nation as a whole.

Massive spending cuts get rousing applause from GOPers one moment, but when the cuts are fleshed out, they realize that their districts will take a hit.

It’s the same thing we saw during the Sandy-aid debate. They got their aid from prior disasters in swift fashion, but now proffer all manner of condition before allowing similar aid to flow months later.