Fine, okay, it's a blog already!

Krugman gets to the heart of the Tea Bagger problem.

"(T)oday's G.O.P. is, fully and finally, the party of Ronald Reagan -- not Reagan the pragmatic politician, who could and did strike deals with Democrats, but Reagan the antigovernment fanatic, who warned that Medicare would destroy American freedom. It's a party that sees modest efforts to improve Americans' economic and health security not merely as unwise, but as monstrous. It's a party in which paranoid fantasies about the other side -- Obama is a socialist, Democrats have totalitarian ambitions -- are mainstream. And, as a result, it's a party that fundamentally doesn't accept anyone else's right to govern.

"In the short run, Republican extremism may be good for Democrats, to the extent that it prompts a voter backlash. But in the long run, it's a very bad thing for America. We need to have two reasonable, rational parties in this country. And right now we don't."