Ezra Klein: The 13 reasons Washington is failing

[starroute]

13. It's a good list but it doesn't get at the underlying causes

A few decades back, it used to be said that compared to most of the world, American political parties weren't at all ideological. Instead, they were coalitions of interest groups -- and that was what gave their leaders the freedom to negotiate back and forth and assemble more ad hoc coalitions to pass specific pieces of legislation. That's not the case any more, which is what a lot of Klein's points boil down to.

As far as why it changed ... there are a number of underlying trends, but I suspect the real difference is that the Republican Party no longer serves the interests of anyone except the 1%. That was why it had to stop seeking out the support of a variety of regional and ethnic factions and focus instead on getting voters to vote against their own interests by using ideological appeals like same-sex marriage.

It's also why the GOP regularly slams the Democrats as being a party of "special interests" and as offering voters "goodies" like heath care to buy their votes. The Democrats still do things the old-fashioned way, and the Republicans can't handle that so they try to make it look corrupt.

But the real downside is that the GOP has turned into a party of ideologues, and the American system wasn't built to handle that.