Who will answer tonight's fire bell?

This is an interesting Digby post about the intractable lunacy that runs like a long thread through the history of the American conservative tribe.

The parties still represent the two tribes that were created out of slavery and the same dynamic prevails today. During the Bush years we were all fascinated by the comparison between the civil war map and the 2004 election. It still represents the political bases of the two parties pretty well, with the ascension of the Randian kook faction recently coming out of the Upper Midwest. It's interesting how this tribal identity spread beyond region, however, a subject which is partially covered in fascinating detail in Kevin Philips 2007 book called American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. he shows how the Southern Baptist convention spread beyond the South to dominate Protestantism in general and it partially explains how this Southern based tribal identity comes to be found in pockets throughout the country. There's also urban white backlash and the dominance of corporate sponsored media aimed at stoking the resentments that animate this particular American identity. This tribe now calls itself the Tea Party or the Conservative Movement and it dominates the Republican coalition.

If President Obama wants to be the Lincoln of his day he needs to recognize that the same dynamics that drove the Southern coalition to total lunacy in 1860 are driving it there today because as John Judis points out, he's had it wrong from the beginning

Go read the whole post for the the Judis reference and more. But the point is what you're watching today is an utterly recalcitrant, immobile, childish, angry faction of legacy confederates preparing to completely wreck the country rather than put off their outlandish extreme agenda until the next budget debate comes around. And it's far from the first time this tribe has reacted this way in a crisis.