This is the Government Republicans Want––No Government At All.

Doug Grow does a good job describing the atmosphere at the state capitol. It's ugly, but the ugliness is on one side of the disagreement. The governor offered compromises; the Republicans made additional demands.

The Republican Party is happy for the government to shut down. It's exactly the kind of government they want. No government at all.

Look at the extremist policy amendments Republican legislators tried to load onto the state funding bill and you realize it's a different kind of game to them. The Republican Party has mastered the strategy of hostage negotiation. They don't want an agreement; they won't take compromise. They want everything.

Consider the key issue of government spending and government revenue. Republicans are adamant about protecting the low low tax rate of the richest Minnesotans, lower than the rest of us pay.

Republicans demand the firing of 30,000 state workers, working people with mortgages to pay and families to feed, so they can protect 7,700 very very rich people, most of whom don't work in the conventional sense at all but finance their extremely comfortable lifestyle from dividends and financial transactions. Rather than raise taxes on millionaires, rather than removing recent tax breaks in fact, the Republicans are happy to raise taxes on all Minnesotans who own homes or rent apartments.