Republicans stuck

John Cassidy writing in the New Yorker says the Republicans are stuck on stupid.  (Well, OK, that's my phrasing, not his, but close to the mark):

Here’s all you need to know about the G.O.P.’s effort to face reality, moderate its policies, and present a more coherent policy platform to voters in 2016. David Camp, the Michigan Republican who chairs the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and who in February introduced a sweeping tax-reform plan that, at least, recognized the basic laws of arithmetic, is leaving Congress. Paul Ryan, the conservative Moses of Capitol Hill, is sticking around. On Wednesday, he unveiled the latest of his right-wing manifestos, thinly disguised as a serious budget, proposing to repeal Obamacare, privatize Medicare, and slash spending on Medicaid and food stamps.

No, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. The Republican Party’s reform effort, which was heralded by a March, 2013, internal report that said that the G.O.P. was trapped in “an ideological cul de sac,” is over almost before it had begun. On issue after issue (gun control, immigration, gay marriage, Obamacare, climate change, unemployment benefits, the minimum wage), suggestions that the Party might revise its extreme positions have been stomped on. The ultras have won out. And nowhere is this more true than in the biggest policy area of all: taxes and spending.