Like most people who live in Washington, I hear frequently from people outside "the beltway" perplexed by the performance of government and the tone of our political dialogue. They don’t understand the acrimony and downright nastiness they see exhibited by our elected representatives on television night after night. I don’t entirely understand it myself, but a big part of it is that the nation is much more ideologically divided and as a result, so is the Congress. Specifically, over the past two decades, we have seen the emergence of an extreme right wing movement in this country that had little or no presence in this country 40 or 50 years ago.
The above excerpt was originally published in U.S. News and World Report.
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