Mike Konczal has a post today that provides a rare inside look at what non-insane Republicans think about their more exuberently ideological colleagues. It’s long, and might take a couple of readings to fully appreciate, so I’ll just set the stage for you. It’s about a Republican member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Peter Wallison, who seems a wee bit less interested than he should be in actually getting at the roots of the financial crisis (at one point, he tells his fellow conservatives that it’s “very important” they do nothing to “undermine” the goals of the GOP caucus in the House).
On a more technical level, Wallison’s big hobbyhorse is making sure that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac get blamed for the financial crisis. The other Republican members of the FCIC, it turns out, basically know that Wallison is nuts, but they’re unsure about whether he’s independently nuts or merely parroting the views of a fellow nut at AEI named Edward Pinto. The actors in this melodrama are Wallison; two fellow FCIC members, Bill Young and Douglas Holtz-Eakin; and a couple of Republican staff members. You can read the whole thing here. When you’re done, Andy Kroll has more on the story here.
