The GOP wrecker strategy

My regular weekly plug for Gene Lyons' column, this one The GOP cage-match strategy Salon 03/03/10. Gene Lyons knows Radical Republicans:

In the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Depression, the GOP has chosen to paralyze government in the hope of blaming the Obama White House and Democratic Congress for getting nothing done. It's a brazen strategy that depends upon news-media complicity and widespread public ignorance for success. Only 26 percent in a recent Pew survey, it's worth reemphasizing, know how many Senate votes are needed to end a filibuster.

To justify themselves, some Republicans have tiptoed perilously close to the lunatic fringe. Several, including newly elected Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, made sympathetic noises after a lone demento flew an airplane into an IRS office in Austin, Texas, killing himself and a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran who worked there.

The madman's big gripe was that the agency denied his effort to evade taxes by declaring himself a religion. [my emphasis]

Tags: gene lyons,
radical right, republican party