Shutdown Fever!

I been writing a lot about Shutdown 2013 (which is thankfully passed) over at the Good Men Project. My basic take is that the GOP is a really dysfunctional party and that's why you had a chaotic series of events where first they wanted to threaten default if they didn't get their way, couldn't agree on what the ransom should be in exchange for not defaulting, then shutdown the government because Ted Cruz wants to be president, then refused to list what their demands were, then refused to explain why they shutdown the government in the first place with it then finally falling apart at the 11th hour when they had to get Harry Reid and the House Democrats bail them out.  And the reason for their final collapse? The ultra conservative "crazy caucus" apparently didn't think threatening default was enough and thus shot down Boehner's last attempt at passing a bill that raised the debt ceiling with GOP policy riders.

I don't think you can explain this chain of events without having the the idea that the GOP is dysfunctional be part of the explanation.

You should go check out how GOP extremism was the cause of all this, how I thought it was pretty obvious that they'd cave, talked about the debt ceiling battle, and finally talked about how the conservative information feedback loop helped cause this whole debacle.