The Right Gets Its ’60s

By BILL KELLER, NYT

“Something’s happening here.
What it is ain’t exactly clear."
— Stephen Stills, 1966

The right-wing campaign to sabotage the Affordable Care Act has driven a lot of normally temperate people past the edge of exasperation. Pundits have described the crusade as crazy, stupid, arrogant, dishonest, cynical, ridiculous and politically suicidal. And that’s not just liberals talking. Jennifer Rubin, who blogs from the right for The Washington Post, says of the defunding obsessives, they “have absolutely no idea what they are doing.” Fox News seems perplexed, and eyes are rolling at The Weekly Standard. Big Business is appalled. Elders of the Republican right, like Karl Rove, are harrumphing their disapproval.

And yet the zealots press on, threatening to hold the rest of the government hostage to kill a health care reform that (a) is the law and (b) shows every sign of being a good thing for the country.

(More here.)