As we approach the August 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling and avoid economic catastrophe, the Republicans will have to decide whether they are: a) a rational group with a grasp on reality capable of engaging in shared governance; or b) controlled by Tea Partiers with no grasp on reality and incapable of shared governance. The Republicans can either repudiate the Tea Partiers, or they can lead us all over the economic cliff.
This Republican Party deserves their current quandary between sane governing and pandering to the ultra-conservative base. When they lost to the first black presidential candidate in our history, the crazy conservative backlash began. A subset of our population was willing to create an alternate universe about Obama. He was not really born in this country. He was a socialist, and somehow simultaneously a fascist. He was a Muslim, and yet somehow simultaneously an atheist and an adherent of black liberation theology.
The Republican Party could have told the crazies to go away. In the 1950s William F. Buckley told the Birchers, the Klan and the racists that they had no place in the conservative movement. The crazies stayed underground (and Goldwater lost big in 1964).
Not this time. This time the Republicans embraced them as grassroots foot soldiers. Corporate interests funded them. Fox News jumped on the bandwagon. Republican office holders not only encouraged the birtherism but also contributed to the Tea Party alternative universe with lies about death panels in the health care reform bill.
But instead of merely harnessing this resentment to boost electoral fortunes, they let the crazies into the room. And the Tea Party folks actually started winning primaries. And then into Congress. And now those who live in this alternative universe have our economy by the throats.
We are now governed by people who believe the earth is 4000 years old. Evolution and global warming are big lies. Homosexuality is a choice. All those fancy, educated experts with all their evidence are wrong. All we need is the common sense of (certain) people.
Now here come more of those experts telling us that defaulting on our debt will be catastrophic to the entire global economy. And once again the Tea Partiers do not believe in listening to experts. Not even to Republican economists. And not even to 80% of the American people. In their alternative universe, there will be no negative consequences on August 3. Indeed, they consider not raising the debt ceiling as good for us.
(Raising the debt ceiling does not give the president a blank check to spend more money and make our deficit/debt situation worse. It merely enables us to spend the money we have already agreed to spend. Indeed, a default would raise our interest rates and increase the debt we would have to pay. The Tea Partiers talk like not increasing the debt ceiling is a noble act of belt-tightening. But it is more like deciding not to pay your mortgage. There is a difference between not paying even the minimum on your credit card bill and coming up with a long term strategy to put less on your credit card.)
So the Republicans have created this monster within their party. And because they won the House last November, we are all governed by these know-nothings. Unless the Republicans repudiate the monster they created, we will all walk the economic plank - regardless of which universe we live in.