They are obsessed with ideology and see little beyond it. They are fixated on health care — to destroy or enshrine it — and will sacrifice anything to do so. And they are running headlong into optional coming implosions they created all by themselves.

If governing is the art of building and tending strong coalitions, co-opting opponents, and amassing as many people as possible behind one’s agenda, Cruz and Obama believe in confrontation, maximizing resistance, creating and fueling a strong opposition, and driving potential supporters away.

Obama began with an approval rating of 70 percent in 2009 and within months had driven it more than 20 points lower with green power; spending; and, above all, health care reform, which voters disliked at the very beginning and liked even less over time.

When polls and two elections popped up as stop signs, he drove right through them, and when a third (Scott Brown’s election to the Senate from Massachusetts) ended his hopes of passage by normal procedures, he rammed Obamacare through on a procedural loophole that fanned the spark of dissent to a blaze.