The collapse of rigor

The collapse of rigor

by digby

The former GOP strategist made a good observation about Trump's ridiculous little immigration "negotiation" pageant on MSNBC this afternoon:

This is an urgent issue it's a moral imperative to fix it and it deserves more than cheap stunts. The leadership of both parties ought to get their noses to the grindstone and fix this, give relief to these people who have known no other country as their own but the United States of America and what you saw yesterday was the total collapse of rigor around the policy making process and it explains perfectly how you get a health care bill put forward by the Republican congress that no one understands that no one has any idea what's in it and a tax cut bill that no one has any idea what's in it, nobody knows what it costs and who is affects. And this is a continuation of that collapse of rigor in what should be the serious business of making public policies for a great nation of 330 million people.

Many people on TV went on and on about how thrilling it was to see a "real" legislative negotiation on television and it occurred to me too that if this is what passes for negotiation in the current congress it explains why everything they've come up with looks like it was thrown together during a drunken night at frat house kegger. After eight years of Tea Party and Breitbart they no longer know how to even write serious legislation. They have majorities in both houses and a president who is so clueless they can shove anything in front of him and he'll sign it. And yet, their process is totally chaotic and the result is political suicide. They got their tax cuts, but there was a time when they could have finessed it to at least seem to be responsible.

Donald Trump isn't sui generis. They're all like him.

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