Richard Cohen writes that the inclination of Republicans to take pledges and oaths to pur4sue certain policies sdmac ks of cultish behavior. Indeed, it does.
Almost all Congressional Republicans have pledged to Grovner Norquist that they will never vote for tax increases. They have also taken the pledge prescribed by the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group controlled by Sarah Palin's PAC.
Now Senator Jim De Mint, leader of the truly crazy reactionaries, is prescribing a pledge that includes a balanced budget amendment.
What the Republicans are doing is best understood in context of a true story. A Catholic religious congregation was slowly dying, and it hired a cultural anthropologist to help it cope. The man asked the monks to reflect on what went wrong and what was likely to happen to their organization. The anthropologist probably wanted to help them with the grieving process. After all, suppressed grief leads to all sorts of dangerous behavior.
In two days, the monks said very little. Then the abbot said, "Let's end the negative
thinking. We still have enough men to start evangelizing another foreign land." The other monks perked up, became excited, and started planning. Of course, they lacked the new recruits to man any missions they were to establish.
But the immediate problem of their depression was solved. They were optimistic, happy, and at peace with themselves. What had happened is that they engaged in a ritual of denial and got the desired results.
This is what is going on with the Republicans. In 2007-2009, they saw their cherished economic ideology blow up and nearly destroy the country. It was a terrible shock. They responded by going back to that same destructive ideology and believing it with all the more intensity.
Some, like former Senator Rick Santorum, are in total denial. He told CNN that Obama's stimulus lost millions of jobs. He denounced Obama for claiming he had created over 290,000,000 jobs-- a number that far exceeds the number of working adults.
Liberals marvel that Republicans say so many things that absolutely contradict the facts. For Republicans, the discourse is not about reality or serving the nation. It is about their own emotional healing and avoiding the painful grieving process that comes when something you love is dead or has failed miserably. In their rrituals of denial, they have completely abandoned reality and paragmatism--the two characteristics of conservatives in days of old. Now they are unrealistic, deniers of facts, and dreamers.
Their denial of science is matched by their refusal to respect empirical economics.
That is why they can claim that cutting spending, which shrinks demand and throws people out of work, is the magic bullet to revive the economy.
That is why they insist that more tax cuts for the rich will magically restart the economy.George W. Bush's cuts created about 1/10th the number of Jobs Obama created. He created 1/100th the number of jobs created by Clinton. The whole business about tax cuts for the rich being the best stimulus was studioed to death in the 1970s by Walter Heller and others. It doesn't work.
The latest claim is that regulations cost American industry $1.75 trillion per year. No one offers any proof. It's not needed. This is about reciting a religious creed or incantation. The other day, I heard my Congressman make this claim. He had no evidence to support it, but he had two state troopers there to enjec anyone who interupted him. It was only a year ago when his rude, howling Tea Baggers were disrupting our political meetings!!
Of course, not all Republican leaders are totally delusional. Mitch McConnell has a good grasp of reality. But he reverently repeats each article of the rightist creed because he kows that blocking stimulus and demandiong massive cuts will cripple the recovcery and guarantee a huge victory in 2012.
People like McConnell and Boehner cynically use the Republican lack of mental stability to gridlock government and deliver total control of government. A dear friend aptly calls them "economic traitors." The deserve the appelation.
How far will they press their advantage. It may well be that they will not be able to stop the game of chicken they are playing with the debt ceiling. Those who truly need the emotional relief that comes with the ritual of denial may need to plunge the nation into default.
Their other option is to force President Obama into a series of short-term agreements, where by they get massive cuts in social spending. The price would be damage to the economy and massive damage to the nation's credit rating and much higher borrowing expenses. But it too would yield handsome political dividends. Obama and the Democrats do not dare to fully defend their economic positions or to attack Republicans while the piecemeal negotiations are in progress for fear that this would goad them into wrecking the nation's credit.
Either way the Republicans win and the nation loses.