Friedman, Kristof Agree: GOP Off the Rails

Columnists Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof both write for The New York Times and agree that the Republican Party has lost its mind. They also point out that this is not only politically self-destructive but harmful to the country.

Friedman: Countries that don’t plan for the future tend not to do well there. When you watch the reckless behavior of the Tea Party-driven Republicans in Congress today, you can’t help but fear that we’ll be one of those. What makes it all the more frustrating is that in so many ways we have the wind at our back, if only we’d pull together to take advantage of it.

The Republican Party is being taken over by a Tea Party faction that is not interested in governing on any of the big issues — immigration, gun control, health care, debt and taxes — where, with just minimal compromises between the two parties, we’d amplify our strengths so much that we’d separate ourselves from the rest of the world. Instead, this group is threatening to shut down the government and undermine America’s vital credit rating if it doesn’t get its way...In short, we’re cutting without a plan — the worst thing a country or company can do — and we’re doing it because one of our two parties has been taken over by angry radicals and barking fools and the old leadership is running scared.

Kristof: In the 1990s, as conservative talk radio spread across America, liberals felt victimized. But, in retrospect, the rise of talk radio, Fox News Channel and right-wing Web sites may have done greatest harm to conservatives themselves. The right-wing echo chamber breeds extremism, intimidates Republican moderates and misleads people into thinking that their worldview is broadly shared. That’s the information bubble that tugs the entire Republican Party to the right and that transforms people like (Senator Ted) Cruz (R-TX) into crusading Don Quixotes. And that’s why Republicans may lead us over a financial cliff, even though polling suggests that voters would blame them.

Yet when Don Cruz of La Mancha and other extremists threaten a cataclysm that could damage the national economy, we have not just self-inflicted harm but a threat to the national well-being. I often cover dysfunctional, strife-ridden countries, from Congo to Syria, Sudan to Afghanistan. This fall, alas, it looks as if I won’t have to travel so far.