Zadnjič sem pisal o tem, kako dejansko le majhna frakcija republikancev determinira uradno politiko republikancev. Gre za 30 do 40 predstavnikov v kongresu, privržencev radikalne “tea party“, ki pa se je ostalih 80% republikancev v kongresu, vključno z Boehnerjem, boji zaradi njihove moči pri zbiranju sredstev in s tem določanju, kdo bo sedel v kongresu v naslednjem mandatu. Tako so močni, da je preostalih 80% republikancev v kongresu v torek bilo prisiljeno glasovati za “shutdown” ameriške vlade. Kot je zadnjič povedal predsednika Obama: “One faction of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government doesn’t get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election.”

Dejansko se “čajankarji” obnašajo kot muslimanski fundamentalisti na drugih zemplepisnih širinah, v določenih aspektih pa skoraj kot talibani. Tisti pravi talibani. Še dobro, da niso popolnoma na oblasti. Če bi Romney zmagal na predsedniških volitvah, bi se 99% Američanov slabo pisalo, kajti “tea party” – podobno kot lik Superhika iz Alan Forda – dela za “top 1%”.

Po drugi strani pa je dobro, da je “čajankarjem” tokrat uspelo zapreti vlado, saj so pošteno razjezili Američane in se je javno mnenje ostro obrnilo proti njim. Njihov uspeh je hkrati tudi njihov polom.

Ezra Klein je objavil dobro analizo moči “čajankarjev” ter sedanjega pat položaja:

The reason the establishment has such trouble with the tea party is that the tea party really, truly means it. They don’t want to cut a deal. They don’t want to get the most that they reasonably can. Most represent extremely safe Republican districts and don’t care about positioning the party as a whole for the next election. Traditional politicians such as Boehner have no playbook for dealing with a powerful faction that’s completely uninterested in strategic or pragmatic concerns.

Back in 2011, the Republican establishment was sufficiently in sync with the tea party to harness their recklessness against the Obama administration. Boehner argued that his new members were just wild enough to crash through the debt ceiling and harm the economy, which gave him crucial leverage in his negotiations with the White House.

But then Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election, and the Republican establishment began to alter its approach. The tea party, however, didn’t. Now Boehner and other mainstream Republicans dealing with tea party legislators face the same problem Democrats faced in 2011: It’s hard to negotiate with people who don’t care about, or even really believe in, the consequences of burning the place down.

Boehner’s problems aren’t such a surprise to Christopher Parker, a political scientist at the University of Washington and co-author of “Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America.” In 2011, Parker began running massive surveys of self-described conservatives in 13 states. He controlled for every demographic characteristic and political opinion he could think of. Tea partiers, he found, were simply different from other conservatives. In one telling example, 71 percent of tea party conservatives agreed Obama was “destroying the country” — an opinion shared by only 6 percent of conservatives who didn’t identify with the tea party.

On measure after measure, tea party members expressed fear that the country was changing in fundamental ways. They were much likelier to view Obama as a literal threat to the nation. They were more conspiratorial in their interpretation of politics. They viewed politics as less like a negotiation among stakeholders and more like a struggle for survival.

“You’ve got about 52 members of the Republican conference who are affiliated with the Tea Party in some official way,” Parker said. “That’s a bit less than a quarter of all House Republicans. That’s enough in the House. They refuse to compromise because, to them, compromise is capitulation. If you go back to Richard Hofstadter’s work when he’s talking about when the John Birch Society rode high, he talks about how conservatives would see people who disagree as political opponents, but reactionary conservatives saw them as evil. You can’t capitulate to evil.”

The problem for Boehner and the rest of the Republican establishment is that the tea party ethos is now being turned against them. After all, mainstream conservatives will compromise with “evil” (or, if you prefer, “Democrats”). For tea partiers, that makes them suspect, too. In fact, one way tea party Republicans can prove they haven’t sold out to Washington’s ways is by opposing any compromise Boehner proposes.

The conventional wisdom in American politics used to be that Republicans followed their leaders while Democrats were barely unified enough to be considered an organized political party. Today, the reverse is true. Democrats largely follow their leaders while Republicans have splintered into two distinct political groups that uneasily share a single party.

That’s the real challenge complicating the shutdown and the debt ceiling. The problem isn’t that Boehner and Obama can’t reach an agreement. It’s that Boehner and Obama and the tea party can’t.

Vir: Ezra Klein