The Problem of Polarization is All Their Fault!

Norman Ormstein and Thomas Mann know what's wrong with American Politics.

Yup, it's those extremely extreme GOP extremists, who are extreme.  Oh, and did he mention their extremism?

"The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American Politics.  It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise."

Yeah, let's look at that vote tally again.  50.5% for Obama, 48% for Romney, and if you combine the two major vote getters who got "Other" ... Ron Paul and Gary Johnson ... hardly bastions of progressivism -- you 50.5% to 49.5%.

31 Governorships out of 50.  And a supermajority in the House of Representatives.

The GOP platform is not an "outlier" by any stretch of the imagination.

And one more thing about that above quote.  Compromise itself is not a virtue.  

Imagine one representative arguing that, say, that rape should be legal, and another candidate saying no it should not.

Too stark?  It's an example of a principle, of course I picked a stark contrast just to disprove the meme.  You've got to get the door open a crack before you can get a foot in it.

The "legendary moderate and center-right" legislators that the authors cite are one reason the GOP really needs to stop compromising anymore at all.

What has happened here is analagous to the old gag where someone asks for volunteers to step forward out of a line and everybody steps back.  The GOP hasn't moved far to the right.  The GOP is to the left of where the bulk of America was just a generation ago.   What has happened is that the DOP (Donkey Old Party) has leaped farther and farther to the left, demanding compromise, and all to often getting it, only to leap further to the left and scream about how "extremist" the GOP is for not eagerly following.   The revolutionaries are not the GOP.  The people calling for Revolution Transformation, or, the dumbed down version that means anything anyone wants it to mean, "Change" .... are the Democrats.