So what you’re seeing motivating the House Intransigents today, what’s driving their willingness to engage in probably-pointless brinksmanship, is not just anger at a specific Democratic administration, or opposition to a specific program, or disappointment over a single electoral defeat. Rather, it’s a revolt against the long term pattern I’ve just described: Against what these conservatives, and many on the right, see as forty years of failure, in which first Reagan and then Gingrich and now the Tea Party wave have all failed to deliver on the promise of an actual right-wing answer to the big left-wing victories of the 1930s and 1960s — and now, with Obamacare, of Obama’s first two years as well.
Conservatives are ‘fighting’ motivated by fear: fear of diversity, change, and expressions of individual liberty, the fear shared by all reactionaries as a society becomes more sophisticated, enlightened, and inclusive; they fear the common-sense pragmatism most Americans today advocate which rejects blind adherence to failed conservative political and fiscal dogma.
The willingness of House republicans, for example, to engage in pointless brinksmanship is the manifestation typical of the desperate reactionary coming to the realization that the change he unjustifiably and irrationally fears is inevitable.
And the motivation is also a consequence of conservative anger at a specific democratic administration, opposition to a specific program, and disappointment over a single electoral defeat – this is indeed very much partisan as well.
