Yes, This, Thank You, Finally, Etc.

This is a very good piece by Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post: Don't Blame 'Washington.' Blame the GOP.

Dysfunctional Washington refuses to work out its differences to solve problems that matter to Americans.

So say pundits and policy activists, perhaps hoping that diffuse criticism, rather than finger-pointing, will yield a government willing to govern.

But the problem isn't "Washington." It isn't "Congress," either. The problem is elected officials from a single political party: the GOP.

...[O]bscuring which politicians stand in the way of that elusive "compromise" may instead allow them to keep getting away with it.

This is, of course, something about which I and presumably any person reading these words have been shouting for as long as we've been paying attention to politics, but it's important that Rampell is saying it on the opinion pages of the Washington Post, and I'm grateful that she has.

Masking intransigent Republican obstructionism behind the notion that "Washington is broken" is the worst of bothsiderism. "Both sides" are not breaking the government. "Both sides" are not failing to govern. "Both sides" are not manifestly incapable of governing.

That is true of the Republicans, and the Republicans alone.