How extreme is today’s Republican party?  Extreme enough that longtime New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is today’s recipient of the Dionne Award (named for Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne and presented at the whim of this blog to a “habitually even-tempered and fair-minded commentator for excellence in expressing moral outrage”).

Friedman is regularly—and justly—skewered for his “quote-the-cabbie” journalism, his “Friedman Units” willed obliviousness to reality, and his anything-but-regular-guy role (and economic views) as scion of one of the nation’s 100 wealthiest families.

But for whatever reason(s)—perhaps because he’s something of a mainstream Republican at heart—his column today about the “U. S. Fringe Festival” pulls no punches about the extremist nature of today’s Republican party, and about President Obama’s leadership role in refusing to negotiate over the government shutdown and, more importantly, the debt ceiling limit.

“President Obama is leading. He is protecting the very rules that are the foundation of any healthy democracy. He is leading by not giving in to this blackmail, because if he did he would undermine the principle of majority rule that is the bedrock of our democracy. That system guarantees the minority the right to be heard and to run for office and become the majority, but it also ensures that once voters have spoken, and their representatives have voted — and, if legally challenged, the Supreme Court has also ruled in their favor — the majority decision holds sway. A minority of a minority, which has lost every democratic means to secure its agenda, has no right to now threaten to tank our economy if its demands are not met. If we do not preserve this system, nothing will ever be settled again in American politics.”

Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

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