From Thomas Friedman's column:
President Obama is leading. He is protecting the very rules that are the foundation of any healthy democracy. He is leading by not giving in to this blackmail, because if he did he would undermine the principle of majority rule that is the bedrock of our democracy. That system guarantees the minority the right to be heard and to run for office and become the majority, but it also ensures that once voters have spoken, and their representatives have voted — and, if legally challenged, the Supreme Court has also ruled in their favor — the majority decision holds sway. A minority of a minority, which has lost every democratic means to secure its agenda, has no right to now threaten to tank our economy if its demands are not met. If we do not preserve this system, nothing will ever be settled again in American politics. There would be nothing to prevent a future Democratic Congress from using the exact same blackmail to try to overturn a law enacted by their Republican rivals....The reason so many mainstream Republican lawmakers want Obama to give something to Cruz & Co. is that they want to get out of this mess, but they're all afraid to stand up to the far-right fringe themselves — with its bullying network of barking talk-show hosts and moneymen.
If anyone is bullying and barking here, it is Mr. Friedman.
Here are some of the ways he is incorrect.
First, he writes: "A minority of a minority, which has lost every democratic means to secure its agenda, has no right to now threaten to tank our economy if its demands are not met." First, they have not lost every democratic means to secure their agenda. They won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives, and they won enough seats in the Senate to prevent the Democrats from having a filibuster-proof majority.
Second, the Republicans are not threatening "to tank our economy." People said the sequester was going to tank the economy and it did not. The Republican fear is that ObamaCare is going to hurt the economy, and they are trying to help the economy by getting President Obama to delay it.
Third, the idea that "nothing will ever be settled again in American politics" is nonsense. Things change all the time in American politics. Prohibition was imposed, then repealed. The Bush tax cuts were imposed, then partially repealed. Welfare was reformed. Congress revises laws that have been passed all the time.