The GOP's Holy Wars

    In an old saying, Opinions are like sphincters.  Everybody's got one.
    This formulation is inelegant but not inconsequential. It cautions us not to be heedlessly fond of our own point of view.
    More caution would be useful in the United States Congress, where the arrogance of doctrinaire Republicans has produced a perfect storm of governmental incompetence.  Louisiana's freshman Rep. Jeff Landry could be their poster boy.  He has announced that even if the president is fellow Republican  Mitt Romney, the White House has leave to tinker only with the smaller stuff.  The big decisions, Landry said, belong to him and his allies. "We're supposed to drive the train."
    The Republican holy war against diversity of viewpoint doubly compromises a Congress that had already defaulted on proper obligations.  Members of one party slight their duty to serve voters of every party. Ideologues cling to their polar positions and leave the center sparsely populated.
    But the center is where the main work of democracy must be done.  There, paths forward are found by people who understand that politics are a tool, not a weapon.  There, political craftsmen -- a dying breed, alas -- are willing to do the glamourless, sleeves-up work of tending to the nation's business. They hold this duty above mere partisan advantage.
    Congress' default is conspicuous in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where Speaker John Boehner's idea of leadership is to sneer at the president of the United States, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor wears his personal ambition like an ugly necktie. While they posture, rookies entertain delusions of giving orders to the White House.  As a rule, the American public has little appetite for extremists. Perhaps, over time, the voters will send to Congress a larger supply of members who understand the difference between being elected and being anointed.
    A loss of political craft also has been conspicuous in the serial disgrace of the Republican presidential primaries. The candidates settled largely for invective, and for insinuations that opinions other than their own were not only different but inferior.
    We may not be surprised these days when politicians ask us to believe they are made of better stuff. We should be concerned, however, when the politicians themselves begin to believe it.  The result, as seen in the Republican primaries, is self-serving noise with nothing coherent to say about appropriate options in public policy. The candidates were not able to parse democracy's language of balanced ends and means, because they had no taste or talent for it.
    Nor is much relief in sight.  In settling on Mitt Romney as their nominee, the Republicans are about to choose a bandleader with a tin ear.  He was politically clumsy as governor of Massachusetts. As a presidential candidate, he looks stiff and uneasy because he is. Romney is genuinely uncomfortable with the public conversations of presidential politics. He doesn't know how to speak to the electorate.
     The atrophy of thought and ability in today's Republican party is sad to see.