Why the Tear Party Congresscritters are HAPPY with a 5% approval rate.

Senator Michael Bennet (on today's Morning Edition NPR show), about the House Shutdown of the government: "People should be upset. The government is closed. It's an outrage. It's ridiculous. It's an embarrassment. There's a reason we have a [5%] approval rate.

"I used to spend a lot of time wondering why anyone would want to work in a place with a [5%] approval rate... if your ideology is about dismantling the federal government, having a [5%] approval rate suits you just find, because you get to go home and say, 'See how horrible these people are?'

"The more degraded they can make the government seem, the more it suits their ideological purposes."

Hear, freakin' hear. It's all so clear to me now.

He also points out that "The divide between Democrats and Republicans is less than the divide that exists in the Republican Party."