The current dysfunction and decay of the American political system is related to the extreme and ever-growing polarization of American politics, which has made routine governing an exercise in brinkmanship and threatens to politicize all of the country’s institutions. The blame for this polarization is not equally shared between left and right. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have argued, the Republican Party has moved much more rapidly toward the extremist views represented by its Tea Party wing than has the Democratic Party to its left.14 But the left has moved further to the left as
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