When the vote came, news outlets were ready for a train wreck. For one thing, the vote for the Doc Fix would require suspending the rules. So it would need a two thirds vote. No way could that happen in the Republican House of Representatives. A majority, yes. But two thirds? Keep dreaming.

But Republicans kept meeting all day long. Sometimes the leadership would dash on out to gather with Democrats.

Very mysterious.

Finally, it looks like the end of the road. Everyone knew there was no hope of a Doc Fix this year. Just like football fans sometimes leave early when their team is way behind or way ahead, members of Congress began heading for the door. Why wait for the inevitable?

Then it happened.

"So many as are in favor say aye."

aye.

"Those opposed no."

NOOoooo...

"In the opinion of the chair, two thirds being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed, and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table."

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Columbia, Tennessee promotes itself as the mule capital of the world. Every year around the end of March and beginning of April, they hold an annual celebration. Thousands of people come from all over to join in bluegrass, gospel, country music, with dancing and events. This year they tried a sort of take off on a rodeo, with guys riding sticks made up to look like heads of mules. It was like Monty Python for mule lovers.

They also have an annual mule parade. Four years ago, a local Republican candidate for Congress, a tea party favorite, was scolded by a parade organizer for some sort of safety violation committed by his campaign the previous year. The candidate, Zach Wamp, got really steamed. He was reported by the Nashville City Paper to have said a couple of things that make campaign managers attempt to fly from tall buildings.

"I make my own rules!" and "You can’t tell me what to do!"

Yikes. Way to go, Zack.

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When Bill Clinton won the Presidency in 1992, conservatives looked for whatever comfort they could generate from his low share of the vote. It had been a three candidate race, and Bill Clinton won with 43 percent.

George Will reacted with some degree of scorn, not toward Clinton, but toward Clinton's critics. He mocked the"delightful Republican attempt to build confidence on a rickety scaffolding of little numbers."

He stated two obvious facts.

One was that the President-elect would have won with a substantially larger share of the vote had the third candidate, Ross Perot, not engaged in a campaign that was self-financed by equal parts big money and big ego.

The other was that Clinton had ... well ... won.

"Clinton`s strong number is: He won 100 percent of the White House."

Unless you are Chris Christie making a ruthless run toward national Republican prominence, that 100 percent of any elective office means you would not be willing to block lanes or break heads to get a few more points past 60 percent. As long as you get enough past half to avoid a nail biting recount, who cares?

That's why it was hard for me to take seriously the Huffington Post headline a few days ago:

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Voters in their mid-twenties will remember just one presidential campaign in which the Republican got more votes than the Democrat. That happened in 2004 as President George W. Bush was cast as the anti-terrorist President.

Elections in which the Democratic candidate got more votes:

• 1992
• 1996
• 2000
• 2008
• 2012

Elections in which the Republican candidate got more votes:

• 2004

A trend can be seen in non-Presidential races. The line is not straight, but it wobbles along, generally in one direction. The oscillation does continue. Republicans are victorious, then Democrats win. But Republican victories are becoming narrower over time. Democrats, when they win, achieve greater margins.

What began happening in 1992? Why is it continuing?

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Republicans are more resistant to self-correction because the internet and television cable offers a cocoon of reinforcement. No need to change direction if you can surround yourself with a thousand voices all chanting that you and those like you are awesome. Republicans are becoming more extreme and losing members as a result.

One disturbing part of the accompanying collateral damage is that Republicans are now going where fair minded people have not gone for a generation. They are trying very hard to deprive legitimate voters of the right to participate in elections.

It started as what Republicans said was an attempt to address a serious issue that could strike at the core of a democratic society. Voter fraud was the danger. Democrats have protested that voter fraud pretty much does not exist.

Elections are not stolen by ineligible voters or people voting multiple times. They are stolen in the backrooms of election halls, where tallies are changed, and boxes are stuffed.

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Bill O'Reilly's comparison has to be taken in context.

The O’Reilly haters are pretty much the people that have no idea what I do. And I like that — I mean, I don’t have any problem with people disliking me, and I’ll tell you why. I’m not comparing myself, but who was the most hated person in Judea 2,000 years ago?

Many, many loved him, but just as many despised him. They’re always going to do that. If you speak your mind, you’re going to have some who like you and some who hate you.

- Bill O'Reilly, March 21, 2014

I happen to disagree with O'Reilly about the cause of the crucifixion. His opinion has been shared by antisemitic bigots for centuries. It has caused much suffering among persecuted Jews. I don't think Jesus was killed because he was widely hated. He was targeted, at least in part, because he was way too popular in the nation of Israel.

That does not detract from the point Bill O'Reilly was attempting to make. 

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It is the central argument of traditional economic conservatism. It has been for centuries. The ability of individuals to form voluntary associations for their mutual benefit without outside interference remains the core.

It tells us a bit about the future of economic policy as envisioned by Republicans, should they return to governmental power in Washington.

The idea is a simple one. Establishing a moral balance in public life is a slippery principle. Conservative economist N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard illustrates that, in an article he was invited to write by the New York Times. He defines the interference by government in the market as "utilitarianism":

The job of policy makers, they argued, is to do their best to maximize the total utility of everyone in society. According to utilitarians, taking a dollar from Peter and giving it to Paul is justified if Peter’s decrease in utility is smaller than Paul’s increase, as would plausibly be the case if Peter is richer than Paul.

- N. Gregory Mankiw, in the New York Times, March 23, 2014

He provides a couple of classical hypothetical case studies, thought experiments, to illustrate the problem of deciding benefits based on the greatest good for the greatest number. One involves killing a healthy individual in order to harvest organs to save multiple patients.

Other philosophers have contrived more stark, metaphysical examples. In the late 1800s, Fyodo Dostoyevsky suggested a fictional community blessed with universal health, prosperity, and happiness purchased by torturing to death a small infant.

Wow.

That makes N. Gregory Mankiw a bit of a philosophical piker, don't you think? Perhaps the next step might be to imagine a world in which adult women become wards of the state in order to protect the possible existence suspected microscopic fertilized eggs.

Conflating liberalism with utilitarianism provides any number of false examples. Everyone is a utilitarian in some circumstance. No one is a utilitarian in others.

Conservatives could come up with better arguments, with some effort. Pretty much anyone could.

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I realized the Secret Service was becoming more and more concerned as we saw the crowd begin to mount.

- President Richard Nixon, via Dictabelt (mp3),   May 13, 1970

The dictabelt recording is filled with clicks and a consistent background hiss, but the voice of Richard Nixon is audible.

I was a college student, a participant in anti-war activities, when I heard about the incident.

The turmoil of those days is painful to recall, even four decades later. The expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia had been announced a week earlier. Then four protesting students were killed at Kent State by National Guard troops. We didn't know then that more students would be killed soon after at Jackson State University in Mississippi.

A restless President had been roaming through the White House as late Friday became early Saturday. At 1 AM, he telephoned Nancy Dickerson of NBC, waking her at her home. At 4 AM, he put on loud music in a sitting room. A sleepy employee wandered out to see what was going on. President Nixon invited him on a late night excursion.

A few months ago, news outlets ran retrospective stories as a Nixon private recording was made public. Richard Nixon had dictated his account of that restless night. Students against the war were camped nearby at the Lincoln Memorial. The President seemed to think of himself as bold, even a bit heroic, as he traveled that short distance to convince the young protesters of the error of their position.

The problem with foreign policy that depends entirely on analogy with the past is that it ignores current reality. We fight the war just ended.

The lesson of World War I was that events can spiral out of control. Treaties made at the drop of a hat are sometimes paid for so many times over, the original tripwire becomes meaningless in comparison.

And so Neville Chamberlain learned the lesson and declared Peace in our Time as he left Munich.

The lesson of Munich was that appeasement never works. Lines must be drawn and never compromised.

And President Johnson drew that line in Vietnam against the monolithic Communist conspiracy to rule the world.

The lesson of Vietnam was that war and peace were not simply in the hands of two superpowers. There were other players in a world of client nations.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney applied the lesson of national sponsors of terrorism after the al Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington. They searched for the culprit among smaller nations and found Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

State Senator Phil Jensen (R-SD) is one such Republican. He has introduced legislation that would allow discrimination against gay people. He's adamant about the right to throw gay people out of a place of business.

They have that right, as a business, to do that. And yet thy're getting bullied and harassed by the gay-lesbian community for something that is a personal, deeply held, religious belief of theirs.

- Phil Jensen (R-SD), recorded by KOTA Radio News of Rapid City,   February 1, 2014

But, like a growing number of Republicans, Senator Jensen goes a little farther. He not only acknowledges the similarity to discrimination against black people, he embraces it. The free market would do a good enough job of eliminating racist practices.

In an interview with the Rapid City Journal, he explained:

If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery for instance, the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them.

- State Senator Phil Jensen (R-SD), March 16, 2014