President Obama issued a Thanksgiving proclamation, honoring a holiday that “brings us closer to our loved ones and invites us to reflect on the blessings that enrich our lives.” He added, “As we gather in our communities and in our homes, around the table or near the hearth, we give thanks to each other and to God for the many kindnesses and comforts that grace our lives.”

The president also delivered an address on Thanksgiving, paying thanks to U.S. servicemen and women, those who volunteer in their communities, and American traditions. Obama added:

“With all the partisanship and gridlock here in Washington, it’s easy to wonder if such unity is really possible. But think about what’s happening at this very moment: Americans from all walks of life are coming together as one people, grateful for the blessings of family, community, and country.

“If we keep that spirit alive, if we support each other, and look out for each other, and remember that we’re all in this together, then I know that we too will overcome the challenges of our time.”

Almost immediately, in a rather ironic twist, right-wing voices rejected the idea that we’re all in this together, and condemned the address. Apparently, Obama said “we give thanks to God” in his proclamation, but that was insufficient, because Obama didn’t also mention God in his address.

Critics of President Obama felt little holiday cheer after the president made no reference to God in his Thanksgiving-themed weekly Internet address. They immediately took to Twitter and the Internet to voice anger and disbelief.

“Holy cow! Is that one screwed up or what?” columnist Sherman Frederick of the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote in a Thanksgiving-morning blog post. “Somebody ought to remind Obama (and his speechwriter) that when Americans sit down around a meal today and give thanks, they give thanks to God.”

Over on the website of Fox News Radio, radio host Todd Starnes also took issue. “His remarks were void of any religious references, although Thanksgiving is a holiday traditionally steeped in giving thanks and praise to God,” Starnes wrote.

Obama Derangement Syndrome really isn’t pretty.

For one thing, the president specifically included a religious message in his proclamation. That really out to be good enough for those desperate to see government officials use their offices to promote religiosity.

For another, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum also issued secular Thanksgiving statements, and for some reason, the right isn’t whining about this.

Ultimately, though, religious people shouldn’t need elected officials to help them celebrate religious aspects of holidays in the first place. To make a fuss about this is absurd, even for conservatives.

When a governor and his staff has been reduced to complaining about random tweets from teenagers, it’s time for them to reevaluate their priorities. (thanks to several alert readers for the heads-up)

A Kansas teenager is in trouble after mocking Gov. Sam Brownback during a mock legislative assembly for high school students.

Emma Sullivan, a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, was in Topeka on Monday as part of Kansas Youth in Government, a program for students interested in politics and government.

During the session, in which Brownback addressed the group, Sullivan posted on her personal Twitter page: “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot”

Now, a teenaged student is, of course, allowed to tell a governor he “sucks.” She’s also allowed to tell others that she told the governor he “sucks.”

But Brownback has his staff monitoring social media, and was so offended by the random tweet that the governor’s office contacted event organizers about it. The teenager was then told by her principal that she would have to write letters of apology to Brownback, the school’s Youth in Government sponsor, the district’s social studies coordinator and others.

Keep in mind, we’re talking about a high-school student with just 60 followers on Twitter. It’s a personal account, unaffiliated with the school or school programs, and didn’t even use the student’s full name. The tweet was written among other messages about “Twilight” and Justin Bieber’s holiday album.

Why on earth would a governor’s office care?

If the student had said something threatening, sure, take it seriously. If she’d raised the prospect of violence, it makes sense to take it seriously.

But this makes it sound as if Brownback and his team have such thin skins, that they take random, largely-unseen, mildly-snarky tweets from teenagers as worth their time. That’s just sad.

Sigh.

The restless political middle — emboldened by the recent inability of a special congressional committee to agree on a debt-reduction deal — is staking out a controversial plan to insert itself into the 2012 election.

A bipartisan group of political strategists and donors known as Americans Elect has raised $22 million and is likely to place a third presidential candidate on the ballot in every state next year. The goal is to provide an alternative to President Obama and the GOP nominee and break the tradition of a Democrat-vs.-Republican lineup.

The effort could represent a promising new chapter for political moderates, who see a wide-open middle in the political landscape as congressional gridlock and bitter partisan fights have driven down favorability ratings for both parties.

“Voters are saddened by the inability of people in Washington to deal with the issues that are important to them,” said the group’s chief executive, Kahlil Byrd, a Republican strategist who once worked for Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D).

I don’t doubt that these people are well intentioned. Their hearts are in the right place; they want what’s best for the country; and I’m glad they’re taking an interest in the election.

But gimmicks are not going to solve meaningful challenges facing the country.

Americans Elect wants a split presidential ticket, requiring their nominee to pick a running mate from a different party. It’s not clear why. Parties have different agendas, which is why there are different parties. Why should a president and vice president have different views about government and policy? Because it would apparently make Americans Elect feel better.

How would Americans Elect go about putting together a platform? They don’t know. It’d apparently be “moderate,” which has come to mean “we agree with Democrats but don’t want to say so.”

If they were successful, how would Americans Elect overcome Republican radicalism? Or the filibuster rules? They don’t know this, either.

The folks behind efforts like these have a terrific opportunity to make a real difference. They could evaluate the two parties, determine which of the two are offering compelling solutions to the problems they care about, and then provide the kind of support their allies need to win and advance their agenda.

An online reality-show campaign may sound very nice in a boardroom, but it’s a waste of time, energy, and resources that could be put to far better use.

Most Americans don’t believe the 2009 stimulus worked. Most pundits, like all Republicans, accept the notion that the Recovery Act “failed” as incontrovertible fact.

And then, there’s reality.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Tuesday that President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package continues to benefit the struggling economy.

The agency said the measure raised gross domestic product by between 0.3 and 1.9 percent in the third quarter of 2011, which ended Sept. 30. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that GDP in that quarter was only 2 percent total.

In other words, weak growth would be non-existent growth were it not for the stimulus.

What’s more, the CBO found there as many as 3.3 million full-time American workers have jobs right now, and otherwise wouldn’t, because of the derided Recovery Act.

Referencing the CBO report, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Hannah Shaw published this chart earlier in the week:

In case it’s hard to make out the details, the blue line shows the unemployment since the start of the recession, while the high and low estimates of what the unemployment rate would have been had Democrats not intervened with the stimulus.

No one ever wants to hear “it would have been worse,” but in this case, the truth is, it would have been worse. The Recovery Act stopped the bleeding, prevented the collapse of the economy, and at a moment of severe crisis, helped put the United States on stronger economic footing.

Republicans don’t believe this, and they desperately hope you don’t either, but this is no longer in the realm of opinion. It’s just what happened.

I’d also note, by the way, that while this chart shows what would have been had there been no stimulus, what it doesn’t — and probably can’t — show is a fourth line telling us how high unemployment would have gone had the country followed the Republicans’ proposed solution. These details have largely slipped down the memory hole, but in early 2009, with the economy hanging on a cliff, GOP policymakers had a fairly specific agenda to get the economy back on track: a five-year spending freeze and a constitutional amendment requiring balanced budgets.

You may recall, in early March 2009, David Brooks said on national television, “A lot of Republicans up in Capitol Hill right now are calling for a spending freeze in a middle of a recession/depression. That is insane…. [T]hat is just insane.”

But that really was the GOP solution. Those same people who falsely claim the stimulus failed pushed an agenda that would have caused an economic calamity from which there was no recovery.

When I think about Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), three anecdotes come to mind.

The first came earlier this year, when Kyl got caught lying about Planned Parenthood, and his spokesperson said the senator’s bogus claim was “not intended to be a factual statement.” The second came in 2005, when the right-wing senator looked for people killed by Hurricane Katrina who might be exploited to justify a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires.

And the third came last year, when Kyl negotiated with Obama administration officials on the New START treaty — an issue he admittedly didn’t understand — and the president’s team agreed to all of the senator’s terms. Almost immediately, Kyl betrayed the White House anyway, just because he could.

Dana Milbank, meanwhile, turned his attention this week to a fourth legacy-defining moment for the Arizona senator: his behind-the-scenes efforts to sabotage the super-committee debt-reduction talks.

It exaggerates little to say that Kyl thwarted agreement almost singlehandedly. While some Republicans on the panel — notably Reps. Dave Camp and Fred Upton — were, with House Speaker John Boehner’s blessing, prepared to strike a deal, Kyl rallied resistance with his usual table-pounding tirades. […]

The sabotage began on the very first day the supercommittee met…. When Democrats floated their proposal combining tax increases and spending cuts, Kyl rejected it out of hand, citing Republicans’ pledge to activist Grover Norquist not to raise taxes. Kyl’s constant invocation of the Norquist pledge provoked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to snap at Kyl during a private meeting: “What is this, high school?” […]

“Walking napalm” is how one Democratic aide involved in the supercommittee described Kyl this week…. As Kyl leaves the Senate, he will be remembered as a lawmaker who intended to be not factual but destructive.

That part about Kyl leaving is important — the GOP leader is retiring at the end of this Congress, and he was in a position to, in theory, show some courage and leadership that other members might have been more reluctant to show. Instead, the Arizonan did the opposite.

Kyl has long been one of the nation’s worst senators, though a few too many pundits refuse to believe it. Kudos to Milbank for shining a spotlight on him.

In August, the Obama administration announced some very good news: thanks to the Affordable Care Act, and following the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, contraception would be covered by insurance plans as preventive care.

The health care reform law already requires insurers to cover “preventive health services” for free, but the announcement was part of a process that defines what those services will include. According to Health and Human Services, insurers would be required to cover not only contraception, but also HPV testing; breastfeeding support, supplies, and counseling; and domestic violence screening and counseling.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, Roman Catholic bishops and other church leaders are lobbying hard against the preventive care, and there’s growing talk they may get an exemption. The New York Times notes in an editorial today that the administration is weighing “an expansive exemption that would cover employees of hospitals, universities, charitable organizations and other entities that are associated with religious organizations but serve the general public and benefit from public money.”

President Obama should stand firm against the church’s overreaching. Allowing a broad exemption for health plans sponsored by employers that object to contraceptives coverage would amount to imposing church doctrine on millions of women who may differ with the church’s stand on birth control and who may not be Catholic. It would deny them coverage for a critical need.

The new rules already contain an exemption for churches and other houses of worship, similar to provisions upheld by the highest courts in California and New York. Moreover, nothing in the rules requires religious objectors to use contraceptives or stands in the way of advocating against their use. By now, some 28 states require employer-provided insurance plans to cover contraception, so the federal policy is hardly a radical departure. […]

The contraceptives mandate is one of the administration’s proud achievements. Weakening it should not even be on President Obama’s radar screen.

The rumors this week have been discouraging about the White House’s plans, though it appears a formal decision has not yet been made. The president may need some added encouragement to do the right thing, and in this case, that means rejecting the demands of the bishops.

E.J. Dionne Jr. had a column on this earlier in the week, and the West Wing should pay careful attention to the conclusion: “If the administration is pressured into refusing any accommodation on the contraception rules, the people who will be undercut most are progressive Catholics who went out on a limb to support the health-care law and those bishops holding the line against the Catholic right by standing up for the church’s commitment to social justice. This will only strengthen the most conservative forces inside the Catholic Church. That can’t be what advocates of reproductive rights really want.”

Reporters asked Mitt Romney on Wednesday to defend the blatant, shameless dishonesty of his first television ad. Here’s what he came up with.

“There was no hidden effort on the part of our campaign,” he said. “It was instead to point out that what’s sauce for the goose is now sauce for the gander.”

As a puzzled look fell over the eyes of a few reporters at a press conference, Mr. Romney added: “This ad points out that guess what? It’s now your turn. The same lines that you used on John McCain are now going to be used on you.”

The conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney is an intelligent person. I’m not sure how much more it will take to convince the political world to reevaluate these assumptions.

The defense is just idiotic. Romney knowingly took words out of context, and changed the meaning of a sentence, for the sole purpose of misleading the public. “Sauce for the gander”? What is that even supposed to mean? If Obama had taken McCain’s comments out of context to deceive voters, this might be slightly less ridiculous. But the president didn’t do this, and that’s apparently not the point Romney is trying to make, anyway.

Rather, the Republican is effectively trying to say, “Obama criticized the McCain campaign, so we get to make stuff up about Obama.” And when pressed, Romney is entirely comfortable arguing that the basics of a healthy discourse — truths, facts, fairness, honor — are now irrelevant.

No one should want to be president this badly.

Yesterday, the New York Daily News said Romney’s defense is evidence he’s “signaling he’s ready for bare-knuckled campaigning.” Nonsense. He’s signaling he’s ready to say or do anything — including deliberately deceive Americans — to further his ambitions. That’s not evidence of “bare-knuckled campaigning”; that’s evidence of a severe character problem.

The DNC, meanwhile, put together a video response, noting media reactions to Romney’s lie, which struck me as pretty compelling.

Just a quick housekeeping note for readers checking in today. I’ll be around, and will check in if something important comes up, but I don’t expect to have much in the way of content today. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.

Also, in light of the holiday, I thought I’d take a moment to share my thanks to all of you. I appreciate your interest, support, and encouragement, and wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving.

On a related note, the White House issued President Obama’s weekly address this morning, pointing to what will hopefully be a better year ahead.

Today’s edition of quick hits:

* Germany, too: “The German debt agency could not find buyers for almost half a bond sale of 6 billion euros. That pushed the cost of borrowing over 10 years for the bloc’s paymaster above those for the United States for the first time since October. ‘It is a complete and utter disaster,’ said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities in London.” (thanks to R.P. for the tip)

* Wrong direction: “New applications for regular state unemployment-insurance benefits ticked higher, according to the latest weekly data, rising 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 393,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.”

* Yemen: “After months of street protests calling for his resignation, President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed an agreement Wednesday that Yemeni officials said immediately transferred power to his vice president.”

* Egypt: “The outskirts of Tahrir Square, the iconic landmark of Egypt’s revolution, plunged into chaos Wednesday, after attempts by the Egyptian military, religious clerics and doctors failed to stanch a sixth day of fighting that has posed the greatest crisis to the country since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in February.”

* Will the failure of the super-committee lead to a credit rating downgrade? Not according to Moody’s, it won’t.

* Murdoch media scandal: “James Murdoch has resigned from the boards of the companies that publish its British newspapers including the now-defunct News of the World tabloid at the centre of the phone hacking sandal, regulatory filings show.”

* Cause for concern: “The U.S.-Russian talks to cooperate on missile defense have apparently failed, as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced a series of retaliatory measures today aimed at giving Russia the ability to destroy the American-led system in Eastern Europe.” Medvedev cited congressional Republicans as a major point of concern.

* AIG wants taxpayers to give $25 billion.

* A fantastic graphic from The National Post on the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

* Newt Gingrich thinks he’s an intellectual. He’s not.

* My principal problem with Mort Zuckerman’s political analysis is that he says things that aren’t true.

* Gamers rule: “Last week, the National STEM Video Game Challenge officially opened, aiming to motivate interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games.”

* Jimmy Fallon apologized to Michele Bachmann, which was the right thing to do. Bachmann isn’t satisfied, though, and now wants NBC to apologize, too.

* Mitt Romney, zombie.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

Though he was hardly the only one, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg (I) seemed eager to blame President Obama for congressional Republicans scuttling a super-committee deal this week. Bloomberg, whose idea of leadership is destroying an activist library in the middle of the night while keeping journalists at bay, lectured the president, saying it was up to him to “bring people together and to provide leadership in difficult situations.”

I’ve seen a few compelling responses to this very odd line of thinking, but I’m partial towards Jon Chait’s piece.

The notion that Obama’s “leadership” could have persuaded Republicans to accept a tax increase seems strange. Republicans, I have noticed, tend not to like Obama very much. His endorsement does not carry a great deal of weight with them. That was why the administration stayed in the background when Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson developed their deficit plan.

When deficit scolds complained that he failed to embrace them openly, Obama tried a different tack when the next bipartisan deficit commission came around. That was the Senate’s “Gang of Six.” Obama decided to openly tout the plan. Did that work? No, it did not. A Republican aide, probably accurately, blamed Obama’s endorsement for his kiss of death. (“The President killed any chance of its success by 1) embracing it. 2) hailing the fact that it increases taxes. 3) Saying it mirrors his own plan.”)

Okay, so if Obama openly endorses a bipartisan plan, he’s killing it. And if he keeps his distance, he’s also killing it. What if he tries to directly negotiate a deficit reduction plan behind closes doors? Well, Obama did that, too, this last summer. Republicans opposed it as well.

The easy response to the “Why didn’t Obama try to intervene with the super-committee?” question is to note that Republican members specifically pleaded with the president to keep his distance. It’s a point, to her credit, Ruth Marcus highlighted today.

But really, that’s barely scratching the surface. Just once I’d like to hear one of these wise presidential critics explain what, exactly, Obama was supposed to do. Republicans weren’t willing to compromise. They’ve admitted as much. GOP members of the panel made demands that no sensible person could possibly consider reasonable, and ultimately, weren’t intended to work towards a resolution anyway.

Does Mike Bloomberg, or anyone else, think Republicans were going to be responsible because the president — the chief executive they loathe with a passion, and whose presidency they seem so desperate to destroy, that they’ll sabotage the nation’s interests — asked them to? Is there any scenario in which GOP officials were going to accept new tax revenue after the president asked really nicely?

The answer, I hope, is obvious, making this “blame Obama for the super-committee” nonsense terribly silly, even by the standards of the punditocracy.

Just so we’re clear, a Democratic president is fighting hard to cut taxes, and is facing heavy opposition from congressional Republicans…

President Obama plunged into the heart of Republican primary land on Tuesday to deliver a direct challenge to Congress to act quickly to extend and expand the payroll tax cut when lawmakers return next week from the Thanksgiving holidays.

Laying out his proposal in deliberately simple and stark terms, the president told an audience here that if Republicans in Congress vote no, middle-class families will have to pay an additional $1,000 in taxes next year when the temporary break ends.

“Next week, they’ll get a simple vote,” Mr. Obama said. “No, your taxes go up. Yes, you get a tax cut. Which way do you think Congress should vote?”

…while congressional Republicans fight equally hard to increase government spending.

Republicans will fight deep, automatic cuts to defense and security programs, scheduled to take effect January 2013 as a result of the Super Committee’s inaction. Indeed, they’ve been at it for weeks. Their fight centers on — what else! — the human toll and the harm spending cuts will do to the economy.

That Republicans were the ones who offered the deep, automatic cuts to defense and security programs seems to have slipped down the memory hole.

That Republicans, as a matter of basic philosophy, generally believe that spending cuts never hurt the economy also seems to have slipped down the same memory hole.

Nevertheless, taken together, GOP lawmakers are pushing as hard as they can against tax cuts and for more government spending — and few seem to find this odd.

These are strange days.

Kristi Watts, co-host of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The 700 Club,” was able to interview former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and towards the end of their discussion, Watts asked, “What’s that one thing at Thanksgiving you just have to have?”

Rice replied, “Mac and cheese … but only once a year.”

The show’s main host, radical TV preacher Pat Robertson, seemed confused by the exchange.

For those who can’t watch videos from your work computers, Robertson asked his African-American co-host, “What is this ‘mac and cheese,’ is that a black thing?”

He was entirely serious.

In fact, in context, Robertson wasn’t confused about the notion of African Americans eating mac and cheese at Thanksgiving; but rather, he just doesn’t know what mac and cheese is, and seems to think the dish itself is “a black thing.”

Just as a point of interest, I’d also note for context that it really wasn’t long ago that Pat Robertson was a powerful figure in Republican Party politics. In 1988, the guy very nearly won the Iowa presidential caucuses.

Several years ago, philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote a fascinating book called, “On Bullshit.” Among other things, the book sought to draw a distinction between b.s. and lies, and at the risk of oversimplifying a sophisticated point, the key difference is considering the truth irrelevant.

A liar makes false claims. A b.s. artist doesn’t much care what’s true or false, because facts are irrelevant in the person’s larger agenda. Liars care what’s true and deliberately say the opposite; b.s. artists are indifferent to what’s true and tend to see facts as inconveniences that simply get in the way.

In light Mitt Romney’s obvious and glaring falsehood in his first television ad, take a wild guess which camp the Republican’s presidential campaign falls into.

By evening, the ad had been attacked, derided, parodied, and ruled “pants on fire” worthy by Politifact. The Romney campaign could have cared less.

“We want to engage the president,” explained Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom in the spin room. “We look at him as our rival. It’s all deliberate; it was all very intentional.”

Romney adviser Ron Kaufman, an RNC committee member and longtime operative, simply said that the ad “worked.”

“They always squeal the most when you hold a mirror up to them,” he said, “and they overreacted, clearly. All they did was make the ad more effective.”

Just so we’re clear, Romney and his team lied. Then they got caught. Then they were pleased.

I suppose one could make the case that the leading Republican presidential campaign has a vaguely sociopathic appreciation for the public discourse, but I think Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit” tells us all we need to know. Truth, facts, evidence, reason, decency, fairness — for Romney and his team, none of this matters. It’s not that they’re considering whether to be honorable; they’ve convinced themselves that the question itself is irrelevant.

What matters is what “works.” And what “works” is what gets aired on television. Usually, professionals are slightly embarrassed when they get caught lying, but the embarrassment is motivated by a sense of shame — the truth is good, being good is worthwhile, deliberately ignoring the truth is bad, and no one wants to be bad.

But there is no embarrassment when such moral niceties are thrown out the window.

This is, by the way, the very first ad Romney chose to run, setting the bar for how he and his team will conduct themselves over the next year.

Be afraid.

Postscript: WMUR, the station airing Romney’s lie, has said it is legally prohibited from rejecting the ad over inaccuracies.

About a month ago, eyeing an end game in the super-committee talks, the parties exchanged “wish lists,” sketching out what both sides wanted from the debt-reduction process.

The results weren’t pretty. Democrats wanted to apply $1 trillion in new tax revenue to debt reduction, and find the resources to pay for the American Jobs Act. Republicans wanted to repeal the entirety of the Affordable Care Act (which would make the debt much worse), approve the Paul Ryan budget agenda (which would add $6 trillion to the debt over the next decade), block grant the Medicaid program, and pass, among other things, tort reform.

Ezra Klein’s summary was helpful.

So Republicans wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, block-grant Medicaid, privatize and voucherize Medicare — in addition to passing everything else in Paul Ryan’s budget. And though it’s not mentioned on this list, Republicans also worked to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, which is to say, they also wanted to pass $3.8 trillion in tax cuts.

Democrats wanted tax increases to make up about a third of the deficit deal — remember we already passed $900 billion in spending cuts back in August. They also wanted passage of a jobs plan that mostly consists of a payroll tax cut, infrastructure investment and expanded unemployment benefits.

Political scientists have a term for when one party is more extreme than the other: “asymmetrical polarization.” This is what it looks like.

Kevin Drum prefers a different description: “I call it ‘negotiating with fanatics.’” He added, “The Republican list is a conservative wet dream. It’s not even remotely a starting point for negotiation. By contrast, the Democratic list is a bog ordinary opening bid.”

What I find impressive — though necessarily surprising — is the extent to which Republicans eyed the debt-reduction process as a debt-expansion process. Eliminating the Affordable Care Act would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to the debt over the next 10 years, and more than a trillion dollars in the decade after that. Ryan’s budget plan, featuring massive tax breaks, adds $6 trillion to the debt over the next decade. Extending Bush-era tax rates adds nearly $4 trillion to the debt over the next decade.

It’s almost as if Republicans had no real interest in lowering the debt at all, and merely saw this process as a mechanism to shrink government to a level at which Grover Norquist could drown it in a bathtub.

Remind me again why we’re supposed to think “both sides” are to blame?

I realize the political world is reluctant to acknowledge this, but the radicalization of the Republican Party remains the most important barrier to quality policymaking in the 21st century. Look again at the wish list submitted by the super-committee’s GOP members and try — just try — to tell me a bipartisan deal was possible.