Preview: Its own worst enemy?

The wreckage in Washington is a revolt by conservative politicians against their own waning power
October 16, 2013


“The Republican Party stands on an ever-narrowing base of older, whiter, more rural voters, whom it regards as ‘the real America’”




In the first week of October, America’s national parks, museums, and war cemeteries closed. The military reserve cancelled training drills, 90 per cent of Internal Revenue Service workers were sent home, Wall Street regulation was put on hold, the National Institute of Health stopped giving grants and locked out new patients from clinical trials, trade talks in Europe were suspended and negotiations with Iran no longer had the necessary personnel. The markets dropped, anxious about the threat that the United States Treasury might default on its obligations, for the first time in American history.

The percentage of Americans who are either working or looking for work is at its lowest level since 1978; among men, it’s the lowest since 1948. As of 1st October, concealed weapons are allowed in North Carolina bars and playgrounds, and earlier this year a town in Georgia passed a law requiring every household to have a firearm. The current Congress is the least productive in over half a century. Republican members of the House of Representatives say they have enough votes to impeach President Barack Obama. Eleven rural counties in northeastern Colorado are trying to secede from the state.

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