British ex-pat Andrew Sullivan, a lapsed supporter of the Republican Party who lives in Washington, has been back home in England for the past couple of weeks. He says the tea-party driven deficit default crisis looks even more bizarre from across the pond:
From this side of the Atlantic, the great game of chicken now being played by the American political class with the debt ceiling is regarded as a sign that America — or rather, America’s Republicans — has gone completely insane. Everyone in Europe is desperately trying to stave off default — and here is the most powerful economy on earth actually hoping for it! When I explain the details of Obama’s last Grand Bargain – a debt reduction built on a ration of 3:1 spending cuts and tax increases – most Brits see it as a Cameron-conservative-style austerity measure. They simply cannot understand why the GOP doesn’t take what would for any sane conservative in any civilized country be a no-brainer. I’m reduced to trying to explain what passes for “conservatism” in America is nothing of the kind – just know-nothing, fundamentalist, Manichean pseudo-conservatism. From this distance, the GOP seems even loonier, crazier and more reckless than they do stateside.
