Gail Collins whimsically notes that
Right now concerned citizens are probably asking themselves: What will happen if the federal government shuts down? [and] ... Whom can I blame for this?
To which I can only reply with confident solemnity that most American citizens are not asking whom they can blame.
Otherwise, Ms. Collins astutely observes that
All hope for averting disaster lies with Speaker John Boehner, who used to be a strangely tanned blowhard but is now regarded as a beleaguered statesman.
Which is shorthand for the right's decaying transmogrification. To paraphrase political philosopher Lily Tomlin, No matter how cynical they become, it's never enough to keep up.
In the Republican Party, today's blowhard is destined to be tomorrow's statesman in comparative relation to the night's new crop of bigger blowhards. By now, Ronald Reagan is a little bit pink, Dick Nixon is to the radical left, and Dwight Eisenhower is just plum Stalinistic.