The Political Tail Wags the Economic Dog in the US

From an article in the Financial Times:

We now also understand that the US is not going to make meaningful investments in its economic future. The conservative position that all spending is evil obliterates any distinction between investment and consumption, between the long term and the short term. The US suffers with an increasingly third-world level of infrastructure, third-tier education system and enormous gaps in the preparedness of its workforce. The debate has now ended; money to upgrade those faltering systems will not be forthcoming. And by the way, the US is not going to take on any other major problems either – immigration, tax reform or climate change, for example. It is not going to do so for the same reason it has failed at sensible economic management: because the Tea Party has a veto.

When will the electorate in the US wake up and realize that the Republican party is busy turning the US into a banana republic?