Medieval cadre of GOP in for hard political lesson

Fans of representative democracy know that there are ways to advocate one's beliefs short of threatening and delivering harm to the larger society.

It used to be that one could blame the parade of manufactured crises not on the whole Republican Party but on its unruly "tea party" faction. That's becoming less and less so as what remains of the pragmatic leadership caves in to the extremists' demands.

The GOP's perspective on governing seems to have moved from enlightenment to medieval. It's become the party of pain.

Before I go on, let me salute some individual Republicans for standing up to the insanity within their party: Rep. Peter King of New York, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. You represent the Republican Party of my father.

For all their patriotic posturing, the tea-party bomb throwers don't like America very much. Worse, they don't understand how democratic governments or economies work. Some of their political leaders do know but don't care, using their electorate's confusion to enrich themselves off their bankroller billionaires.

There's nothing to do about these voters. They won't squawk until their own checks -- for Medicare, Social Security, farm subsidies, roadwork -- stop arriving. Tea-party congressional districts tend to be poor, old, rural and on the receiving end. If anyone is a burden to productive America, they are.

And so, President Barack Obama had to cancel a trip to Asia to baby-sit Republican tantrums in Washington. The financial and psychological damage of this shutdown keeps rising.

The Republican Party's staunchest allies -- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers -- are now tearing out their hair, demanding a stop to all this ignoramus talk about a debt default being no big deal.

"Our nation has never defaulted in the past, and failing to raise the debt limit in a timely fashion will seriously disrupt our fragile economy and have a ripple effect through the world," wrote the president of NAM, nobody's idea of a liberal.

You have the formerly pragmatic Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina speculating that a default on government debt is a manageable situation. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has his nutty solution: spending piecemeal. If there's not enough tax money coming in during a particular month, he says, we can decide what it gets spent on.

Great, let's have fistfights every month over whether North Cascades National Park can answer its e-mail or not.

America's savers and investors, meanwhile, are given a choice of a kneecapping or punch in the stomach.

Looking forward to 2014, Republicans may have already lost their swing vote. And even districts packed with tea-party discontents may not be so safe as they assume.

Once it sinks in that their checks come from Washington and not from heaven, the hotheads will turn on a dime. And please stop calling them "conservatives."

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