NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about government-shutdown-mania, and quite a mania it is, too. They don't seem to see the downside, to the country or to themselves. Now, maybe there's some way in which this is supposed to work out politically that I'm just too thick to see -- for example, if the Republicans were rowdy drinking buddies, say, kicking up a ruckus like this in a bar, and I were close enough to the door, it might seem charming. Where once George W. was popular because Americans thought they'd like to have a beer with him, maybe the Republican Congress are supposed to be the guys Americans would like to see throw a chair through a plate-glass window and fight off a bunch of cops. Well, have you got a better explanation?

UPDATE. I'm as surprised as you are but Bill Keller actually said something:

What’s happening here ain’t exactly clear. But I have a notion: The Republicans are finally having their ’60s. Half a century after the American left experienced its days of rage, its repudiation of the political establishment, conservatives are having their own political catharsis. Ted Cruz is their spotlight-seeking Abbie Hoffman. (The Texas senator’s faux filibuster last week reminded me of Hoffman’s vow to “levitate” the Pentagon using psychic energy.) The Tea Party is their manifesto-brandishing Students for a Democratic Society. Threatening to blow up America’s credit rating is their version of civil disobedience. And Obamacare is their Vietnam.

I've been talking for years about how conservatives have adopted the old Sixties slogan "the personal is the political" as their own, and in their weird exhilaration over this latest maneuver I detect more than a little "if it feels good, do it." Maybe more people are noticing this.

UPDATE 2. Digby also notices.

Many of the mainstream pundits who eye-rolled and tut-tutted bloggers and activists for failing to understand the ways of the world are now commonly recycling ideas we were discussing half a decade ago.

And Digby is still on Blogspot instead of in the Times. No wonder we're fucked.