Why the GOP hate the Modern American State explained:

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/republicans-private-terror-why-they-despise-modern-american-state-and-embrace?akid=12910.294211.9vDZct&rd=1&src=newsletter1033541&t=14

The Iran letter said more about the GOP than Tom Cotton and company ever intended. Here's their demented logic.

21st century Republicans are also following in the footsteps of their late 20th century brethren, who, for example, didn’t just oppose and defame Bill Clinton — they impeached him. So while it’s undoubtedly true that some Republicans despise Obama, their behavior as a party seems driven by something other than purely personal motives. Difficult as it may be for many Americans to realize, politics is really about something more than personalities. It’s about, er, politics, and the recent behavior of Republicans must be seen in that light to be fully understood. Their latest escapades merely extend the logic of the party’s evolution since the early 1960s. They may hate Barack Obama, but what they really hate is the modern American state.

extending over at least the Obama presidency but with roots as far back, perhaps, as the Clinton impeachment. It involves the readiness of Republicans to violate long-standing norms of institutional conduct in order to advance a highly divisive, intensely partisan agenda. Impeachment and the threat of impeachment; the use of primaries to defeat Republican incumbents judged to be insufficiently “conservative”; a willingness to default on the debt or shutdown the government; the indiscriminate use of the filibuster to require super-majorities in the Senate on virtually every issue— this pattern of increasingly radical behavior may certainly be associated, in any given case, with the anger or pique of particular politicians. But its deepest source is in the political attitudes of an increasingly radical party.

Also relevant is the entrepreneurial environment GOP politicians inhabit nowadays. The proliferation of media outlets, PACs, and “policy” centers on the right has changed the calculus for many of its office-holders. They know an alternate career path is out there, one potentially more lucrative and less burdensome than government employment. A conservative politician who is fast on his or her feet, looks good in a suit, and adheres closely enough to right-wing dogma can trade public service for the private sector and make out like a bandit. The pioneer here, of course, is Sarah Palin, who ditched the governorship of Alaska for media celebrity after her ride on the Straight Talk Express in 2008. Her example is surely not lost on the likes of Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton. As such people grow more and more detached from actual governing, the norms that enable and define successful governance matter less and less to them.