There is a demonstrable disposition among base voters on the Republican side, including large numbers of authoritarian-minded folks who see the world as a fight between good and evil, in which fact and truth only matter insofar as they reaffirm these folks' view of reality.

That one party goes to such lengths to keep people from voting should be a major national scandal and it's disgraceful that it's part of the landscape in which people vote in this country.

The truth is that, as every Republican president in the modern era has acknowledged de facto, when times are tough, it's better for the government to engage in deficit spending than to choke off a recovery.

In too many ways, the GOP of 2012 could not plausibly deny that which has become too plain to ignore -- that it is the part of antipathy to difference and social change.

Boehner claims that the Democrats proposal is not serious and is a bad-faith offer. Coming from him, that's rich. We have a three-decades long record to prove definitively that Republicans are themselves unserious about deficits.