How We Got Here

Jonathan Chait: “If you want to grasp why Republicans are careening toward a potential
federal government shutdown, and possibly toward provoking a sovereign
debt crisis after that, you need to understand that this is the
inevitable product of a conscious party strategy. Just as Republicans
responded to their 2008 defeat by moving farther right, they responded
to the 2012 defeat by moving right yet again. Since they had begun from a
position of total opposition to the entire Obama agenda, the newer
rightward lurch took the form of trying to wrest concessions from Obama
by provoking a series of crises.”