Republicans have become the Guardians of gridlock

Republican legislators have a major problem. When your ideas won’t do, what do you do? This is even more problematic when you don’t want to moderate your political philosophy.

Unable to sell their ideas, they have reverted to a series of political and parliamentary maneuvers rather than continuing to attempt to win the people’s vote or use the legislative process to achieve their goals.

The strategy seems to be to initially distort or outright lie about proposed legislation they do not support - remember “Death Panels”?

If dishonesty doesn’t work Speaker Boehner will refuse to bring the bill to the floor or Senator McConnell, the self-proclaimed guardian of gridlock, threatens filibuster. He has already set a record of 420.

Republican controlled state legislatures are gerrymandering districts to protect extreme conservatives and trying to enact needless new election laws to suppress the progressive vote.

If you are afraid to present your principles to the complete electorate for approval and you refuse to make any adjustments I suppose you try to change the rules and the face of the electorate. This may work for primaries but has not and will not for national elections.

The question is why the Republican party has given up on governing and trying to shape legislation through compromise – an underlying concept in the design of our form of democracy – in favor of political shenanigans and a purely recalcitrant attitude toward their elected responsibilities.

We don’t expect our political parties to attempt to pervert the political process rather than present a reasonable alternative vision for the future.