Here's another one from Michael Tomasky of the Guardian (UK, of course) whose comments are generally right in-line with my own thoughts. He just expresses them better as he interprets the follies known as US politics to the world at large.
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I remember very well the last time the Republicans took over the House of Representatives, under Newt Gingrich 15 years ago. Gingrich was as outrageous and demagogic then as he is now—in 1991 he participated in the ghastly gay-baiting of the then-speaker, a Democrat, based on absolutely no evidence of any sort. But there was, all the same, something … I can't quite type "likeable", but original about him. He thought, as they say, outside the box. I'll never forget that in his maiden speech as speaker, after he accept the gavel from the very man he'd so cruelly slimed, he invoked Franklin Roosevelt. You could hear liberal Democrats in the chamber gasp. That took chutzpah. Yes, Gingrich kept it interesting.
About this bunch, there is nothing interesting. Most of them are as bland and odourless as they are mercilessly and unashamedly in the employ of corporate America. The ones who aren't that are so far to the right that even corporations, at least some of them, are suspect, insofar as they can be woven into the fabric of dark conspiracies about how the government and the banks and Hollywood are out to capture "your" freedom and make "you" submit to coastal, elitist norms.
Who are these people? Here's a small sampling.
Speaker John Boehner, one hears repeatedly, grew up the poor son of a publican and one of 12 children in the very conservative suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. One hears less often that his net worth now is between $2m and $7m.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/05/house-of-representatives-2011No wonder the world at large is truly beginning to doubt our sanity.
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