"The current moment in politics came about slowly, not suddenly," writes Jon Lovett in The Atlantic, charting how the GOP went crazy, "but it doesn't make it any less of a national emergency."
The proliferation of horserace political coverage is of this brand of lunacy, where the presumption is that a political act will be described on the basis of how it will be perceived … “Will the president’s statement hurt him?” … There are more serious examples we can argue about. The way campaigns are financed. The expansion of presidential power. The size of our prison system. Yes, there are those who get angry about all this. “Hello? This is crazy, right? Anyone?” But eventually we all just go back to looking at our phones.
And then the government shuts down.
And here's a list of the 144 Republicans who voted to send the U.S. into default, people so bonkers that even the Wall Street Journal seems to have had its fill of them.
