How Low Can the Republican Party Go?

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What is the single most consequential political development of the past five years? Some might say the election (and re-election) of  Barack Obama; others might point to the passage of the most important piece of social policy (Obamacare) since the 1960s; some might even say the drawing down of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in reality, it is the rapid descent of the Republican party into madness.

Never before in American history have we seen a political party so completely dominated and controlled by its extremist wing; and never before have we seen a political party that brings together the attributes of nihilism, heartlessness, radicalism and naked partisanship quite like the modern GOP. In a two-party system like America's, the result is unprecedented dysfunction.

Whether it was the promiscuous use of the filibuster and other blocking techniques in the Senate to stop President Obama's agenda; the manufactured fiscal crises highlighted by the disastrous  debt limit showdown of 2011; or the unceasing efforts  to undermine the economic recovery by blocking any and all measures to stimulate the economy, President Obama's first term was dominated by the Republican's unbridled obstructionism and disinterest in actually governing the country. That anything was accomplished is nothing short of a miracle.

But after the results of the 2012 election one might have expected the Republican fever to break and some level of sanity and good sense restored to the party of Lincoln.

Think again.

If anything, the first half of 2013 has seen the GOP continue its journey towards "peak awful". Go back to the beginning of the year. As millions of Americans were celebrating New Year's Eve, the  Republicans were careening the country  off the fiscal cliff because of their insistence that no rich person should ever pay a cent in higher taxes. The budgetary mania continued through the sequestration and refusal to compromise with President Obama even after he  put the liberal sacred cow of Social Security on the table. Along the way Republicans foiled modest efforts at gun control, ginned up  made-up scandals involving the IRS and the death of four Americans in Benghazi and couldn't actually be bothered with the  difficult task of proposing public policy legislation. And after three years of complaining incessantly that Senate Democrats haven't passed a budget, key Republicans have spent the last  100 days obstructing the budget process.

But in the past few weeks things have actually gone from terrible to unimaginable. There's the GOP " Ebenezer Scrooge" Farm Bill, which would have cut food stamps by $20.5bn, causing nearly 2 million poor Americans to lose food assistance. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Republican House also passed an amendment to the bill that would force food stamp recipients to work in return for benefits, but provided no actual funds for job training. In fact, it even barred states from spending more money on employment and training. So if you're a poor person and you lose your job, you lose the government benefits  that allow you to feed you family. This piece of  monstrous legislative crueltywas supported by all but six House Republicans. Thankfully the larger bill failed, but Republican heartlessness has hardly been dimmed.

Across red state America, Republican legislators are doubling down on new  abortion restrictions like those soon to become law in Wisconsin that would force women who want a constitutionally protected abortion to have,  in some cases, a wand inserted into their vagina so they can see the fetus they are about to abort. In Ohio, the state recently enacted new anti-abortion laws that not only  divert federal funds away from Planned Parenthood to anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy centers" where women are fed a witches brew of mistruths about the health risks of abortion.