Yes, Republicans are an infection; Ted Cruz is a symptom

Two op-eds from the Washington Post highlight the seriousness of the Republican problem.

First, about Ted Cruz, the idiosyncrazy (yeah, I spelled that right) from Texas:

Ted Cruz is a talking headache for GOP leaders

A snippet:
" GOP lawmakers encouraged the rise of the tea party, which now dominates Republican primaries and threatens the same leaders who nurtured it. Cruz’s fellow Texan, John Cornyn, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, could face a primary challenge next year and therefore can’t afford to cross Cruz, who beat an establishment Republican in the 2012 primary. Likewise, the Senate GOP leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is up for reelection and has to keep on the good side of tea party favorites such as Sen. Rand Paul, also of Kentucky, and Cruz."

Then, about whether ideological stalemate is a good way to run the country:

Gridlock is no way to govern 
(does that answer the question?)

" The Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank reforms were enacted despite GOP obduracy and promiscuous use of the filibuster, in part because Democrats for a short time had 60 votes in the Senate and kept their members together. But the quality of both laws was diminished by the unwillingness of members of the minority to vote for the final product on the floor after many concessions they requested had been agreed to during committee markups. More important, passing laws in this fashion left nearly half the polity viewing the legislation as illegitimate. "

and

" Finally, Summers’s idea that climate change and inequality are issues not of gridlock but of vision forgets the fact that serious debates about policy avenues in these areas are impossible if half the political arena believes that climate change is a hoax, and if one political party is animated by the Grover Norquist no-tax pledge and the Mitt Romney vision of a nation of 53 percent makers and 47 percent takers."    

GOT THAT RIGHT.

Maybe, just maybe, the cowardly act of not passing any meaningful gun control legislation despite the crying blood of the children of Newtown will be somewhat of a wake-up call.  I'd like to think so, even it's unlikely.