Digby has a post up today discussing the extreme polarization, both in the congress and the electorate.
"There is not likely to be another bloody civil war, but we are in a cold civil war and have been for quite some time."
She quotes a speech by Lincoln where he's addressing the polarization of his day:
These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them."
It occurs to me that you could substitute any number of words for "slavery" and the situation is identical, today. "Torture", "drowning the government in a bathtub" (via cutting taxes even further), "ending social security and medicare" (AKA "undoing the new deal"), "ending affirmative action (AKA undoing "the great society"), and "overturning Roe" come to mind, but there are others.
She goes on:
"The civil war didn't really resolve the underlying problem, which wasn't only slavery, but also the inconvenient fact that the country is really two different political cultures, one of which has always believed that the other looks down on them and in return loathes them for it. It's that same stubborn resentment which animates the rump Republican party today. They have a chip on their shoulders the size of Mt Rushmore. And they will not be appeased even by capitulation. They demand conversion."
As adequate as that explanation is, it doesn't go far enough (IMO). The most extreme factions of the right wing, which have siezed control of one of the two major political parties, don't want the rest of us to exist, at all. We are, in their opinion, dead wrong and must either join them in thought, word, and deed, or sit quietly in the corner while they go about the business of government on their own. Our input is unacceptable, even after the overwhelming results in 2006 and 2008.
I agree with her conclusion:
There is not likely to be another bloody civil war, but we are in a cold civil war and have been for quite some time. In fact, except for respites for foreign wars and assorted other catastrophes and recoveries, we always have been. Whatever consensus we achieved was always papering over the differences, not transcending them. And at times like this, when the country desperately needs to solve some problems, the Democrats, representing the rest of the people, need to work past this faction and get the job done. Empowering them in these circumstances is a very bad idea.
They will howl no matter what we, or the Democrats, do. They WILL NOT join us in solving problems. They will refuse to alter their own failed (as "the lost decade" of the Bush years demonstrate) path.
Faced with such an opposition, it is time to steamroll them. Recess appointments and reconciliation are the only options left, and frankly we've run out of time.
I hope that the "bipartisanship" meeting about health care reform demonstrates to the American people, once and for all, which political party is populated solely by uncompromising extremists. Perhaps then the voters will finally "have the Democrats' backs" and give them the (political) courage to do what must be done.