The G.O.P.'s Doomsday-Machine Politics - The New York Times - 0 views
-
. The bad news is that a form of doomsday-machine politics — in which you threaten to blow up things that you care about, because you think your rivals care about them more — is playing out in Washington right now, courtesy of the Republican Party.
-
Doomsday-machine politics made its first U.S. appearance in the 1990s, when Republicans shut down the federal government in an attempt to extract concessions from Bill Clinton.
-
Republicans tried again, with more success, in 2011, using the threat of refusing to raise the debt ceiling — forcing the U.S. government into default, with possibly catastrophic effects on the world economy — to win policy concessions from Barack Obama.
- ...5 more annotations...