As shared in Australia

David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality -- New York Magazine

I read this a while ago, but don't think I have linked to it before.

David Frum writes in detail, from an insiders perspective, about how the Republicans and the Right in the US have "lost touch with reality". It's a good summary of how the Right in the US has gone bonkers.

The Australian Right is, unfortunately, too readily infected by American ideas; such that, for example, means testing of a rebate for those on comfortable incomes (a family has to earn more than $166,000 to even start having it reduced) is called "class warfare".

Of course, those complaining the loudest about this also want the government to reduce the deficit. Tony Abbott is at least smart enough to recognise the benefit of this measure to helping him with the budget should he win government, and hence he won't promise to re-instate the rebate, and nor should he. If the Labor government runs its full term, the Coalition's opposition to the rebate change will have been largely forgotten anyway.

This is, I suppose, just routine political humbuggery and gamesmanship; but honestly, when you see the insistence from the American Right that for their deficit problems, the answer is to reduce taxes for the rich, you have to worry about how much their ideology will affect the Coalition.