Republican Senate leader warns failure on debt talks could seal Barack Obama’s re-election
This confirms the train of thought I predicted the GOP might eventually have to board. It was likely Boehner’s and McConnell’s hope that this message of political exigency would be transmitted by individual Members of Congress to their constituents. That McConnell has had to come out and say publically that the GOP will be doing itself no favours by being seen as the standard bearers of sovereign default, rather than this responsibility falling to individual Representatives and Senators, is one more indication that the extremists have irrefutably taken over the Republican Party. McConnell and Boehner were probably told by Cantor, Bachmann et al that the leadership was going to be the ones sticking their necks out on this one, not the Teapartiers and affiliated extreme elements.
A deal with the White House will be reached, but the new right evangelists are not going to be the ones taking the “blame” from the radicalized GOP base. This is a very interesting development; it shows that the perception we have of the GOP’s radical elements as having moved the party’s centre massively to the right is a correct one. The antics of the TP endorsees are not posturing, but rather are reflective of the radical political current coursing through the party of Lincoln, Rockefeller and Reagan.