The US government - and all of US – are being held hostage by a lunatic fringe in Congress. John Boehner has lost control of his caucus.
Republican radicals are running the country like an ungovernable banana republic. Millions will suffer from a needless government shutdown.
We wrote about it this morning in
GROSS MISMANAGEMENT: World’s only superpower lurches from crisis to crisis.
It is so totally unnecessary.
It makes the US the laughing stock of the world.
And there’s another, worse crisis looming in a couple of week when the debt ceiling needs to be raised.
Republicans have forgotten the drubbing they took during the last time they did a similar thing and forced a government shutdown in 1995 and 1996.
In a New York Times report on Sunday Last Shutdown a Lesson Lost on Capitol Hill Jennifer Steinhauer tells us the shocking truth.
“The ghosts of shutdowns past are lurking in the halls of the Capitol … But there is one little problem: even those who lived through those government shutdowns have varied recollections, or none at all, about how and why they happened.”
Philosophers wiser than I have warned repeatedly that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
“[I]in many ways, Washington of today feels a lot like 1995-96, when the government shut down twice over the course of a month,” Steinhauer adds.
Perhaps the only bright spot in all of this is that the 1995-96 crisis ended with President Clinton winning re-election comfortably and Newt Gingrich being banished to obscurity.
Maybe that history will repeat itself. The GOP deserves to be punished for its crazy, adolescent behavior.