Ben Buckman.net

Alex, responding to Nate Silver's wonderment over the House GOP leadership's zeal to bring every member in line against the stimulus bill, writes something very important (emphasis mine):

House Republicans believe that they are still in an era where voters will respond positively to open partisan warfare. And why shouldn't they believe that? It's how they came to power, and in their individual districts, it may be the only way for them to stay in power.

That's just it. In their distrincts they need to hate Democrats, hate unions, hate "big Government," hate immigrants, hate gays. Decades of gerrymandering have produced dozens of fringe districts. So that poses a fix: no Democrat can win those districts, but no Republican who wins those districts can be taken seriously by the mainstream.

Personally I'm at the point where I'd be happy to see the Republican Party go the way of the Whigs, into oblivion. Let another party - a libertarian party, or some new kind of conservative party, or another party on the left - take its place. It'll take a few years for the Democrats to get stale and entrenched; the GOP isn't serving as a constructive opposition now anyway.

Bottom line: maybe we shouldn't be bothered in the short run by the GOP's [minority] extremism. It's better in the long run.