Can't Get Past the Crazy

I was thinking today about a problem in the political discourse that I lose sight of sometimes: namely that the source of much of my frustration is that I can't get past the Crazy.

What I mean by that is that I want to have thoughtful and civil arguments with people on the Right, in which I acknowledge the value of their points of view and they acknowledge the same for me, even as we continue to disagree because, in the end, we have different priorities.

But I can't get to that because the Right has gone crazy.  To wit:

• The argument over the federal budget should be something like this: liberals want to increase taxes more than cut spending to balance the budget, because we value spending on the social welfare state, while conservatives want to cut the welfare state in favor of lower taxes.  But when I try to get to that, I find the Right arguing that any tax hike at all is the End of Civilization, even though tax rates are the lowest they've been in many years.  They can't even acknowledge that there are two sides to the deficit equation.
• There's just no question that the Republican party has moved way to the Right over the last few election cycles.  Mitt Romney was the "conservative" in 2008, and now he's the squishy moderate- while his stated positions have moved to the Right!  The honest argument a Republican can make is to acknowledge that and defend it- "yes, we moved right, and thank God!  We want to experiment by forming a modern economy with a much smaller welfare state and with much lower tax rates on the wealthy- we think it will lead to so much growth that we won't need the welfare state very much anyway because everyone will be able to get a job".  But instead I hear how the problem is that Obama and the Democrats are socialists, dedicated to redistributing wealth and creating equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity.  A Democrat "move to the Left" is a matter of faith, notwithstanding the lack of evidence.
• The honest conservative argument on global climate change is that we can't afford to make the changes that would be required to make a difference in production of greenhouse gases, and that economic growth is just too important to imperil through untested technologies.  Instead we get the canard that Global Warming is a hoax being perpetrated by greedy scientists so they can get more funding.
• The Trayvon Martin case brought up race relations again.  The honest conservative argument is that we're putting too much emphasis on race, that progress is being made against racism, and that conservatives share liberals' disdain for racism and denounce it when found among their supporters.  But what I hear is that the only racism issue left in the US is that of Black Nationalists who hate White people.  I asked a particularly rabid Right wing correspondent of mine if he thought George Zimmerman was a racist, and he couldn't bring himself to say it.  But admitting that he's a racist doesn't undercut any conservative arguments at all- it gives conservatives a chance to join with liberals and denounce racism.  But they won't.
• The honest argument against the Affordable Care Act is that health care just isn't a right, or that it's too expensive to provide, or that funding it for poor people will pull too much money out of the system and imperil the "greatest health care in the world" that exists for the rest of us.  Instead we get ridiculous arguments about the individual mandate being unconstitutional, or canards about Death Panels.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  I'd love to have a debate about what a civilized society should provide through the government and what it shouldn't provide.  Instead, I'm swatting away CrazyFlies.