Cracking up over the GOP

[superpunk]

What’s happening in the Republican Party would be endlessly amusing were the consequences for the nation not so significant.

The strident far right wing has taken over the GOP. Conservatives deemed not conservative enough have lost their seats in the primaries. Moderates who aren’t drummed out in primaries are leaving the party. Some wackadoodle candidates are rejected during the general election because they have scared off independents. And many of the candidates who do earn the voters’ trust seemingly couldn’t care less about transitioning from politicking to governing once they get to Washington.

The American political system depends on a thriving two-party system. Competition and compromise and the ideas those two forces generate make Democrats and Republicans better. But the dysfunction in the GOP reveals a broken party out of step with the country. When he was asked last Sunday if Republican former presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon could win the nomination today, former Sen. Bob Dole said, “I doubt it.” The 1996 Republican presidential nominee then delivered a damning assessment of his party:

I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says “closed for repairs” until New Year’s Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas.

The “GOP autopsy” of its 2012 presidential loss took a similarly scolding tack.

The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.

Instead of driving around in circles on an ideological cul-de-sac, we need a Party whose brand of conservatism invites and inspires new people to visit us. We need to remain America’s conservative alternative to big-government, redistribution-to-extremes liberalism, while building a route into our Party that a non-traditional Republican will want to travel. Our standard should not be universal purity; it should be a more welcoming conservatism.
Unfortunately, the brand of conservatism coming out of the Republican Party in the states and on Capitol Hill remains a problem.

Tea Party darling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is making friends and influencing people on both sides of the aisle as he lectures colleagues. E.W. Jackson came from out of nowhere to become the Republican nominee for Virginia lieutenant governor earlier this month. Since then, we’ve been wading through a treasure trove of his intolerance and incendiary remarks. He once said that “Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was.” And in announcing her decision not to seek a fifth term, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota waved from the Grassy Knoll of Conspiracyville when she said, “I’ve demanded that this administration never, under any circumstances, subordinate our national security for the administration’s weak version of political correctness.” As Jamelle Bouie noted yesterday, Bachmann might be leaving, but her brand of “paranoia and resentment” will linger long after her departure.

Things have gotten so bad in the GOP that Lincoln Chafee, the Rhode Island governor who descends from an old-line Republican family, left the party in 2007 to become an independent. Today, he will switch to the Democratic Party. “The governor reached this conclusion after assessing his own principles and priorities and values, and deciding they blend very well with the national Democratic Party,” Chafee spokesman Christian Vareika told Greg Sargent yesterday. “The governor has seen the Republican Party has become much more hostile to reaching across the aisle and compromising and finding a middle ground. The governor has the feeling that at every juncture, Republicans in Congress have worked actively to thwart the president’s agenda, not for substantive policy reasons, but for political ones.”

We have gerrymandering, reactionary politics and the politicians who practice it to appeal to a shrinking monochromatic base to thank for a Republican Party more interested in obstruction at all costs than in governing. This simply isn’t sustainable. Not only does the GOP suffer because of this but so does the Democratic Party, which could grow complacent without a viable opposition. The whole mess would be hilarious were the nation not at risk.

 

[superpunk]

GOP needs more Doles and fewer Bachmanns


Maybe Bob Dole has more clout in the Republican Party than we think. He suggested on Sunday that the party put up a “closed for repairs” sign for the rest of the year. Then along comes Michele Bachmann declaring on Wednesday that she won’t seek reelection.

On the surface, Republicans will be happy that they won’t have to answer for her exquisitely inflammatory statements anymore. Democrats will be disappointed to lose a face that launched thousands of contributions their way. You might say her departure is a small repair for the GOP’s image.

In fact, Bachmannism is far from finished. The Minnesota right-winger deserves to be memorialized with an “ism” because she perfected a tactic well-suited to the current media environment: continually toss out outlandish, baseless charges, and, eventually, some of them will enter the mainstream media — if, at first, only in the form of “coverage” of what conservative radio shows, Web sites or Fox News are talking about.

You don’t have to bat 1.000 or even .350 in this game. Get just a handful of your accusations and strange takes on reality into the political bloodstream and you’ve won.

Bachmann’s method is now common currency. And here’s the beautiful thing: Even as the regular media does some of your work for you, you lambaste the very same media. This only creates more pressure on them to cover you.

“I fully anticipate the mainstream, liberal media to put a detrimental spin on my decision not to seek a fifth term,” she said in her eight-minute40-second video announcing her decision not to run. She practically invited reporters to do just that by insisting her decision did not stem from the danger she might lose reelection or because of an investigation into the finances of her 2012 presidential campaign. Is citing her denials a form of “detrimental spin”?

Her video provided choice examples of the Bachmann method and the extent to which it is now being emulated by others. She denounced “this administration’s outrageous lack of action in Benghazi, Libya, and the subsequent political coverup, which resulted in the deaths of four honorable, dedicated public servants.”

Note the clever construction of that sentence. It implies that it’s the administration’s “political coverup” that led to the killings in Benghazi. It’s hard not to conclude that she’s saying those deaths were all about President Obama’s political needs.

“I’ve also called out this administration and the Treasury Department,” she added, “for allowing and perhaps even for encouraging partisan, selective enforcement against American citizens based upon their political beliefs that aren’t in line with those of the administration.”

At best, in the Bachmann formulation, Team Obama was “allowing” this political persecution to go on, which implies that the White House was fully informed of what was happening in that Cincinnati IRS office, for which there is no evidence. But she didn’t stop there: Again with no evidence, she alleged that the administration might be guilty of “perhaps even . . . encouraging” the harassment of its opponents.

But hey, it’s Obama, so you can suspect anything. After all, as Bachmann once said, “most Americans are wild about America, and they are very concerned to have a president who doesn’t share those values.”

My nomination for the ultimate in Bachmannism was her slander against the program encouraging citizens to serve the nation and each other. Opposing a bill to expand AmeriCorps, she warned that “there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.” Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge is just around the corner.

Bachmann’s retirement should foster some soul-searching about the nature of our political discourse and how easy it is for falsehood and innuendo to get treated as just one more element in the conversation — no more or less legitimate than any other.

This is the very sort of relativism (“my ‘truth’ is as good as your ‘truth’ ”) that sound conservatives condemn. It ends in nihilism.

Dole, one of those sound conservatives and a revered party war horse, wanted his party to shut down for a while so it could “spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas.” Bachmannism substitutes accusations for ideas and paranoia for an agenda. Alas, there’s little reason to think it will leave the stage with her.

 

[Minimalist]

The Republican party would be much better served with more Ted Cruz's and Rand Paul's than John McCain's. The old timer Republicans are the ones holding back the party. They're corrupted and by definition not even remotely close to Republican. That's where the divide is. Republican's vs RINO's.

 

[superpunk]

if you say things like RINO's you're part of the problem.

Cruz is a lunatic, Paul for the most part is a phoney.

 

[Minimalist]

if you say things like RINO's you're part of the problem.

Cruz is a lunatic, Paul for the most part is a phoney.

True, I get the term RINO is partisan and the problem with politics. But, at the end of the day there are different philosophies from each side. There's no avoiding that. The only difference is that now the other side demonizes the other to get their ideas through. It's become more about belittling and berating. It should be about selling and making solid points the other side can get on board with. I think it's pretty fair to say that Obama has created a hyper-partisan atmosphere in D.C.

We'll have to agree to disagree on Cruz and Paul. I think they're the future of the GOP so there's definitely no avoiding them.

 

[superpunk]

did you even read the article?

These people are everything that is wrong with politics and news, which becomes apparent when prominent news stations become mouthpieces for the political party and in turn the political party engages in the sort of sensationalism that will drive ratings for the retarded viewers of the news station.

Fear. Conspiracy. Fantasy. All the tools of the new anti-RINO republican party which has led to them getting trounced so badly that conservatives are bailing on the party, telling the party it needs to do some serious soul searching. The party is either oblivious, or just plans to ride out on the coattails of their idiotic base as long as they possibly can keep feeding this garbage (Benghazi, Obama the secret Muslim, fear fear fear fear) to people who continue to lap it up.

 

[Minimalist]

Yes. First skimmed it, then read it through.

This complaint about media sensationalism started with democrats. They started the hyper-sensationalism. It started in Bush's second term. There really is no denying that. Every thing the guy did was blown way out of proportion. He was ridiculed and treated like shit by the media. It was pure hatred. You'd think the guy came over from Russia, took over, then started killing people here. It's not fair to sit there and say it can't be done now by Republicans. I mean MSNBC is the epitome of political mouthpieces.

This country has a funny way of balancing itself out. You bring in one of the most radical presidents we've ever seen and then the opposite party becomes radicalized to counterbalance that. That's the way it works. Obama didn't give a damn about what any Republican was saying or take their advice his first 4 years. He still doesn't. I'm pretty sure Republicans aren't brilliant actors as democrats would like us to believe. There was and is genuine frustration by the Republicans because of the way Obama handles himself. It's his way or the highway.

He alone brought this upon the country. This is a tough country. I don't ever see one party laying down for the other. You take something away that the other party firmly believes in without working with them, they are going to attack back and take something away that you like. It's an eye for an eye. The same applies with getting things done. It's a two party system. Obama doesn't seem to understand that. Granted, at times Republicans have given him a pretty hard time. A lot of the time it was deserved and coming from a good place. Obama just has no clue how to bring people together. He's divisive, and that's putting it nicely.

Everything you see from the Republican party is a reaction to Obama. He provoked it and now people have to live with it. Radical democratic ideas will bring out radical republican ideas.

 

[superpunk]

1. MSNBC has it's fair share of blunders and is definitely liberal-leaning but there is no democratic equivalent of Fox News. Fox not only takes it's marching orders from the GOP, employs members of the party, but also has no problem inventing news with or without anything to base it on. Bush never had to deal with that. Not even close.

2. Obama is as far from a radical as you can get. He is moderate as they come, and has taken shit from his base for being too tolerant of Republican obstructionism - especially early when he really could have done whatever he wanted to. Blaming him for the Republican's insanity is absolute nonsense.