TPM Reader: Dangers of Default

Talking Points Memo reader TW, employed in the investment industry, makes the following cautionary point regarding GOP anti-government nihilism and the debt ceiling.

Saw your editor’s blog post on McConnell and it’s something I have been thinking about all week. I work in the investment industry and I am watching the town hall meetings, this thing with McConnell and it’s bringing flashbacks to 2011. I don’t think most people understand just how close we were to a real meltdown that summer. Without Biden and McConnell, there would have been a default and that would have dwarfed 2008...But after seeing the coverage of the town halls this week and listening to the right wing turn on their own, little by little, I guess I get it now. These people really are nihilistic and the only thing that will satisfy them is a total breakdown of government. Only then, they believe, can we have our “freedoms” and our “rights”. I don’t pretend to understand how you mentally get to that point, but that’s where they are.

Now, I know that there have always been crazy people in this country throughout our history, but there has also always been rational people who think first about the country and act accordingly. But that’s not where we are today. Rational people have been voted out or left and in their place are the Lee’s, Cruz’s, Rubio’s, etc. And while they claim to be capitalists and free market proponents, they couldn’t negotiate themselves out of a paper bag in the real world, and they have no understanding of practical economics...Which brings me back to McConnell. For all of the issues I disagree with him on, at least he was rational and would cut the deal to keep us from going over the big cliff. If he’s gone over to Crazyland and Boehner has abdicated any remaining parts of his speakership, then what’s left?

This is what is possible when a political party is taken over by people who, egged on by partisan media, subscribe to their own version of reality despite ample, widely available evidence to the contrary.