So, yes, yesterday’s Republican was more liberal than today’s moderate Democrat. But that is merely because yesterday’s Democrat wrecked your brand, and the electorate moved right.

That wrecking took a good two decades to cement itself. Today’s GOP only took it’s real turn for the worse in the last 5-6 years. At least they are well on the way to wrecking their brand as well.

Where that leaves us I don’t know. For now, the American center is well to the right of where it was even during the Clinton administration.

The supercommittee’s failure was finalized yesterday, and so today is the day we figure out who to blame. President Obama was clear in his remarks last night: The gridlock was the Republicans’ fault. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Republican co-chair of the supercommittee, is clear in the Wall Street Journal this morning: the Democrats deserve the blame. My colleague Michael Gerson, meanwhile, says it was Obama.

If by “at fault” we mean “unwilling to compromise,” we can do better than listen to the self-serving remarks of the players. We can look hard at the movement in the actual plans. Before the supercommittee, there were the Obama-Boehner negotiations. And we have a pretty good idea of the plan that almost — but didn’t quite — clear those discussions. We also have the deals on the plans that were offered in the supercommittee. And if you look at the numbers, it’s pretty easy to see which party moved further towards a compromise.

Hint: It’s the one that named Sen. Max Baucus as one of its six key negotiators.

The final Boehner plan envisioned tax reform that would generate $800 billion in new revenues and bring the top rate down to 35 percent. In the supercommittee, the highest Republicans ever got on taxes was the Toomey plan’s $300 billion, with envisioned a top rate of 28 percent. So on taxes, it’s fairly clear: The supercommittee Republicans were far to the right of Boehner.

…

Frankly, it’s hard to find even one area in which supercommittee Republicans offered a substantially new compromise — or even matched what Boehner offered Obama.

(I’ll concede a lack of evidence presented, but not that there isn’t evidence to draw from).

The rest of your statement is just a baseless opinion.

Members of the Far Left can be counted on one hand and are ignored.

Republican ideology, however, is stupid, often intentionally so. No one on your side, however, is going to admit that until OWS protesters take a bath and get job.

The Dems are more than happy to cut down (some of) these loopholes. See: depreciation on airplanes that Obama suggested modifying, only to be skewered by the GOP (not Dems).

* Here’s an example: why the hell is there a mortgage interest deduction on a SECOND home? We can quibble about a first home interest deduction, but a second home? Why the hell are the rest of us subsidizing the interest on vacation homes?

At this point, movement conservative ideology is telling us that the ice caps aren’t melting, that people who have a stroke are going be able to go comparison-shopping amongst health care providers, that people just struggling to get in low-wage work need to pay more in taxes, that Sharia law is such a looming menace to America that the only way to forestall the rising tide of radical Islam is to enact to enact a Christianized version of Sharia law, and that we’re too broke to fix our nation’s infrastructure but the sky’s the limit when it comes plotting new foreign wars.

At some point, someone has to go on TV and call this game out. Otherwise, neither side has any real incentive to negotiate this stuff in any kind of good faith. Might as well be Krugman.

It looks like the Dems are happy playing the representatives for a system with high rates which get cut down for rich donors by lobbying and juicing Congressmen. Can anyone convince me otherwise?

Most MA Congressman stay far to the left rather than make any attempt to represent some middle ground. That’s probably a good political move because there isn’t much organized middle ground here to create a challenge.

So there’s no appeasing the 20% on either side, and that includes Krugman.

Who cares about Krum? Both parties have outliers that the other side trots out and says “See! This proves your side is wrong.”

I think that there is no end to the partisan divide and we might as well get used to it. If the country wants change they will just have to elect a super-majority, and right now the odds are better that the R’s will have that rather than the D’s. The President is the one wild card, with my bet right now he’ll be re-elected. So….. gridlock.

Democrats like it when Republicans act like Democrats.

Expressing support for global warming is “acting like a Democrat?” You don’t see a problem there? If someone becomes a RINO on the sole issue of climate change — which party has a problem?

But you know if Newt was doing the ad, it was because there was a pot of global warming money for him and his friends at the end of it.

Democrats like it when Republicans act like Democrats. Let’s not pretend there’s anything more sophisticated about that part.

Our government slogs along on the leftover ideas from the 20th century. All that is left of the New Deal is that big government supports big mercantile companies, be they defense, computer, healthcare, drugs etc. A few Republicans appear to favor cutting the government side, until they get elected and the business side of the equation gets to them. Then they keep the collusion going — and get faint praise for it from the Democrats!

Equality through New Deal-type operations demands efffective and totalitarian price and wage controls and nobody is for that any more. That is why there is no Left left. But left to its own the government-industry nexus will just feed back forever, taking more and providing less in the way of products and services people want. Businessmen may choose to produce, but they like it even better to get paid by the government to NOT produce.

“I have a structural hypothesis here,” Krugman told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour Sunday. “You have a Republican ideology, which Mitt Romney obviously doesn’t believe in. He just oozes insincerity, that’s just so obvious. But all of the others are fools and clowns. And there is a question here, my hypothesis is that maybe this is an ideology that only fools and clowns can believe in. And that’s the Republican problem.”