Say what you will about Barney Frank, but he is framing the breakdown of these bailout talks in exactly the right way. This morning, on the CBS Morning Show, he said this (doesn't appear that there's video up yet; I apologize for the AP link, but it's all I could find):
I didn't know I was going to be the referee for an internal GOP ideological civil war
That, my friends, is what is going on in Washington, DC: a Republican Civil War.
More below...
This is not a partisan showdown between Republicans and Democrats. And don't allow anyone -- coworker, neighbor, newspaper columnist, radio host, blogger, TV talking head, pundit, candidate surrogate, Congressman or addled, aging Presidential hopeful -- tell you otherwise.
Republicans created this mess through years of deregulatory neglect.
Republicans ignored the warning signs of this mess through eight years of an administration that encouraged corporate greed and irresponsibility.
And when Republicans faced a national economic meltdown of their own making, they turned on one another.
The Democratic Congressional leadership has done everything it could to try and patch this mess up. But it is the Republicans who have turned into a warring, ugly, divided mob that has been reduced to battling among themselves while the nation edges ever-closer to the abyss.
Democrats can only do so much, and then we must hope that there is some small kernal of sanity left among Republican leadship that brings about an acceptable solution.
We can only wait and hope.