In an article published in the Washington Post on April 30th, Robert G. Kaiser reviews the recently published book
‘It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics of Extremism’ by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein
According to Mr. Kaiser Mann and Ornstein have been covering the Washington scene for over thirty years. They are typically bipartisan but this book is certainly not that.
They published a book several years ago titled "The Broken Branch' and even got Newt Gingrich to like it so much he gave it a thumbs up on it's cover.
per Mr. Kaiser
That book was sharply critical of then-Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for running the House with minimal regard for “regular order”— the traditional, bi-partisan way of doing business by the rule book that Mann and Ornstein revere — and instead putting political advantage ahead of careful legislating. Gingrich praised their book despite its critical assessment of his fellow Republicans.
This new book takes off the gloves and tells how the current Republican Party has almost declared war on government.
per Mann and Ornstein
Today’s Republican Party has little in common even with Ronald Reagan’s GOP, or with earlier versions that believed in government. Instead it has become “an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition . . . all but declaring war on the government.”
Since I have not read the book I can't go beyond what I read in the review but,,,
Mann and Ornstein wrote an articl in the April 27 Washington Post in which the say
"Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem."
They start telling about how Rep. Allen West said in a video that there are a lot of Democrats in Congress who are communists and... it goes downhill from there,
According to Mann and Ornstein
It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
Methinks that when writers known for there objectivity start blaming the repub=lick=ans then maybe some one in the repub=lick=an leadership might just want to take a step back and see if there is a problem there.
I really don't think this book will cause any real change unless they lose enough seats to really understand we the voters agree with the book and are willing to do do something about it.