One party, the Democrats, suffers from the usual... | Still Not Going To Do This Every Day

Tuesday, May 24 2011

“One party, the Democrats, suffers from the usual range of institutional blind spots, historical foibles, and constituency-driven evasions. The other, the Republicans, has moved to a mental Shangri-La, where unwanted problems (climate change, the need to pay the costs of running the government) can be wished away, prejudice trumps fact (Obama might just be Kenyan-born or a Muslim), expertise is evidence of error, and reality itself comes to be regarded as some kind of elitist plot.”

—Birtherism, the debt ceiling, climate change, evolution: Are Republicans losing their grip on reality? (via azspot)

I’m not sure why this is a surprise; as an unnamed Bush aide told Ron Suskind in 2004,

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

When the leaders of your party have told you for years that reality will bend to whatever convenient position you want, it’s no wonder the GOP acts this way.

(via azspot)