John Harwood makes...

...an interesting observation about today's Republican Party (my emphasis):

In the Iowa straw poll over the weekend, a candidate who opposes raising the country’s debt limit under any circumstances (Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota) edged out a candidate who supports abolishing the Federal Reserve (Representative Ron Paul of Texas).

Also:

Every Republican candidate in a debate before the straw poll pledged to oppose any tax increase — even if paired with spending cuts 10 times as big.

That leaves even some of Mr. Obama’s fiercest critics helping him make the public argument he will sound again on this week’s bus tour.

“If taxes cannot be raised under any circumstances, then we have veered from economic policy to religious catechism,” Peter Wehner, a former deputy to Karl Rove in Mr. Bush’s White House, wrote for Commentary.

He continued, “There is something amiss when the political pressure in a party, any party, is so intense that it prevents a serious intellectual conversation from even taking place.”