RENDERING THE COUNTRY UNGOVERNABLE ISN'T WHAT CRAZY PEOPLE DO -- IT'S WHAT TERRORISTS DO

Steve Benen directs us to this post from Jonathan Bernstein:

... One of the things that you’re going to be reading plenty of, particularly when the budget battles kick in again this fall, is that the American democratic system is broken.

... I do think there’s something broken, and it isn’t the system: it's the GOP. The problem isn’t that they're very conservative. Even a party with policy preferences to the right of Rand Paul could, in theory, manage to bargain with even a very liberal Democratic Party. The problem, rather, is that the GOP's incentives are skewed. Rather than caring about policy, they appear to care more about symbolism, such as a Balanced Budget Amendment, than about actual policy. Rather than caring about cutting the best deal they can get, they appear to care more about proving their loyalty to the cause (they refused to deal on health care even though so doing might have gotten them more of what they wanted). This requires them to oppose Democratic presidents regardless of what it means in substantive gains or losses.

The result is that Republicans wind up following the lead of hucksters and talk show hosts, even when it leads them to strange places....

In his post, Steve agrees, adds a few examples, and arrives at a conclusion:

... Our federal courts are a mess because new judges can't be confirmed. Our Senate is a mess because of procedural abuses with no modern precedent. Our House is a mess because it's been overrun by mad men. Our executive branch is struggling with a series of hostage strategies, in which the president would rather pay the ransom than watch the country burn.

... the system breaks down when one of the parties goes berserk. We’re not in a broken-down car; we're in a perfectly good car with a crazy person in the passenger seat recklessly grabbing the steering wheel at inopportune times....

But this isn't crazy. It's strategic. (And it works, by the way.)

This strategy accomplishes two things, which work in tandem: it renders the country ungovernable whenever Democrats are seen as the people doing the governing (which is what terrorists try to do to legitimate governments) and it pushes unthinkable ideas, such as enacting a Balanced Budget Amendment or effectively dismantling the social safety net in a period of severe recession, into the mainstream (which can then be acted upon when the voters react to chaos under Democratic rule by electing Republicans).

It wouldn't work if the voters understood that Republicans are the problem, but saying that has long been taboo -- the mainstream press would much rather say that the dysfunction is everyone's fault, and Democrats never simply say, It's the Republican Party, stupid.

Republicans know they're never blamed for the chaos they create -- in fact, they know they're rewarded for it -- so they keep creating it. That's not crazy, that's savvy -- if you're a canny, calculating, high-functioning psychopath, or a terrorist.