The question President Joe Biden asked this week regarding Republicans 00 What do they stand for? — is a valid and pressing one. The GOP once stood for smaller government that lets local political officials lead. Americans deserve to know how Republicans reconcile that position with, for example, state officials telling local officials they can't set their own pandemic safety policies, and whether Republicans still stand for fiscal responsibility.

Americans will be paying the debt for years from GOP tax cuts that did little but to make the rich richer. The GOP's one-time stand for law and order contrasts with continuing efforts to downplay a violent attack on the seat of government and continuing to support the lawless ex-president who fomented it.

America needs two parties with clearly articulated goals. Right now, it has just one.

If Biden's frequently defensive press conference on Wednesday wasn't his finest moment, one statement he made regarding his stalled agenda did get to the heart of a key problem with America's political system today. "I did not anticipate that there'd be such a stalwart effort to ... make sure that President Biden didn't get anything done," Biden said, then asked: "What are Republicans for ?"

During the Reagan era, the GOP was considered the party of ideas. Its more fitting nickname today is the party of No. Lockstep Republican opposition to, for example, Biden's infrastructure package is sadly ironic from the party of Dwight Eisenhower, who gave America the interstate highway system. GOP opposition to voting rights legislation betrays a legacy that included working with northern Democrats in the 1960s to pass landmark civil rights and voting rights acts.

Not so long ago, conservatives fancied themselves clear-eyed realists who hewed to facts and expertise. Nonsense like the anti-vaccination movement was for starry-eyed, back-to-nature leftists who saw the world as they wanted it to be rather than as it was.

Today, Republican leaders around America pander to those who reject science with such fervor that it's filling hospitals past capacity. In Florida and Texas, putatively conservative Republicans prohibit businesses from setting their own pandemic safety rules for employees — committing what was once the cardinal conservative sin of government meddling in free enterprise — while in Missouri, state Attorney General Eric Schmitt attempts to replace the judgment of local school boards with his own centralized-government edict against mask requirements.

You don't have to agree with Democrats' goals to clearly understand what they are: social equity, government support for the vulnerable, a science-based approach to the pandemic, easy access to the ballot. Other than cutting taxes and overturning Roe v. Wade, there's no such clarity on the GOP's agenda today.

A vibrant democracy needs its liberal and conservative elements debating policy and seeking consensus where they can. To have one party defined almost entirely by political nihilism is bad for both parties — and for the country.

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