[RandyH]

The Republican Party needs to kick out these guys who lie about how bad things would be if the U.S. were late on its sovereign debt payments. They are in the same category as the birthers. You can't have crazies in your party. They just cause the sane people to leave, then one day you wake up and the crazies are the majority of your party, and then you are in real trouble.

[cpleppert]

"debt limit denial" is only a small part of the problem. The other half is the expectation that 1) threatening something that hurts the country(which he admits) is a good thing if you can pass your political program and 2) the other party will simply fold and its members will pass your program

1 simply denies that the opposing party should be able to represent itself in the democratic process but 2 is simply bizarre. No one is going to help their opponents pass their agenda on the basis that if they don't the other party will cause the economy to collapse. If that worked, the Soviet Union would have threatened to start a nuclear war anytime they wanted something and would expect the United States to back down.

The line of reasoning that validates such a tactic is just totally bizarre. Even if you can get some type of leverage over the other party you will never get enough concessions to justify the economic damage. Economic damage occurs in the present while entitlement spending cuts occur in the future. Even if the economic damage is minimal it seems quite a stretch to assume that statutory changes today are the only way to stop a future congress from overspending. This hypothetical future congress would be perfectly capable of cutting spending on its own.

[anonymoushn]

Why would the U.S. choose to default? Its debt service costs much less than it collects in tax revenue.

[cpleppert]

Because the treasury probably doesn't have the statutory authority to withhold payments to appropriated programs. Even if it did, that would mean cutting social security or medicare payments while waiting for an interest payment. So you are certainly hurting people who are depending on those programs(a political nightmare) in the expectation that there will be no debt limit raise. If you think that missing an interest payment will be a catastrophe you paradoxically have no incentive to order these social programs cut to make an interest payment because no one would be so irresponsible as to allow that to happen.

[mikeash]

I think that "one day" happened some time ago now.

[jbigelow76]

This is the result of primaries decided as a result of gerrymandering. All aboard the crazy train!

[irons]

Gerrymandering probably isn't as dominant a factor as people think: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-09/gerrymandering-didn...

That story is based on 2009 research: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25548144?seq=2

Admitting that gerrymandering isn't the problem puts the solution further out of reach, unfortunately. Generational change is slow and painful.

[js2]

See also http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/17/r... which argues it being due to incumbency and the Democrats "wasting" votes due to being more highly concentrated in urban areas.

[jbigelow76]

I didn't feel the article really refuted the problem of gerrymandering. The Ted Cruz and Cravaack/Nolan shifts weren't cited as examples of where gerrymandering failed to produce the desired result. Gerrymandering might not be a problem when viewed in the context of a single legislative session but the lasting impact will be felt over many sessions.

But the article does make good points of self selected voting districts resulting from people moving in and out of communities.