Why The Republican Party is Dead To Me, and Why It Needs To Crash and Burn Forever

As the revelations into the Ukraine scandal expose more of the depths of trump's eternal corruption, it's also exposing why a once-respected political party has devolved into the cranks, conspiracy nuts, thieves, and violent extremists eager to promote any act of evil.

There's a reason why trump flourished as a con artist in the Republican Party: The GOP was already consumed by its own rot. Let me refer to Adam Serwer's piece in the Atlantic (warning, they use a paywall now):

What the Framers may not have contemplated, however, is the extent to which a demagogue is capable of convincing his supporters that the president and the people are one and the same, and therefore, the president is incapable of betraying the people, because he is their purest expression made flesh. Trump is but a crass distillation of this anti-democratic idea, but if it were not deeply rooted in the Republican Party, he could never have ascended to its leadership.

Already, Republicans have sought to dismiss Trump’s explicit attempt to extort a foreign leader into criminalizing a political rival by denying that the summary of the call shows what it shows. Republican legislators believe there is nothing the president could do to lose the support of the people who put them in office, and so there is no political benefit to acknowledging his misconduct, even though they would immediately demand the impeachment or resignation of any Democratic president who did the same thing. In the 1990s, Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his false denials of sexual impropriety; they would not hesitate to impeach a Democratic president who withheld foreign aid to extract a smear of his Republican rivals.

This is the "If Obama Did X, Republicans Would Go Apeshit" theory. Republicans don't mind their own committing crimes and sins that the GOP would accuse Democrats of committing. The hypocrisy of it reeks but Republicans seem to enjoy the smell. Back to Serwer:

But behind this unfailing submission to Trump also lie more troubling influences. As the parties have become more racially polarized, and the Republican Party has become more exclusively white and Christian, Republicans have begun to think of themselves as the only genuinely legitimate actors in the polity. This is why Republicans draw districts that hand them more offices even when they fail to win a majority of the votes; it is why Republican legislatures strip Democratic executives of their powers when the electorate foils their efforts to rig elections in their favor; it is why the Trump administration attempted a fraudulent scheme to use the census to diminish the influence of minority voters relative to white voters; it is why Republicans seek to pass laws intended to suppress minority votes; it is why every night on Fox News, viewers hear one host after another outline deranged conspiracies about how Democrats want to steal America from its rightful white owners through demographic change...

The Republican belief that their opposition is inherently illegitimate is one reason it does not matter to many Republicans that Trump’s allegations that Biden sought to get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to prevent his son from being investigated are baseless. As CNN’s Daniel Dale has documented, there is no public evidence that Hunter Biden was ever himself under investigation; the prosecutor whose firing Biden called for as vice president was widely considered corrupt; the investigation Biden supposedly shut down was “dormant” at the time Biden expressed the view of the Obama administration that the prosecutor should be fired; and the reason world leaders, including Barack Obama, were demanding his firing in the first place was that he was failing to investigate corruption in Ukraine, not that he was being prevented from doing so. As my colleague David Graham writes, “Biden’s pressure to install a tougher prosecutor probably made it more likely, not less, that Burisma would be in the cross hairs.”

Attempting to use one’s official powers for private gain is the most basic definition of corruption. Yet because the base of the Republican Party believes itself to be the only legitimate expression of popular will, whether or not its members constitute an actual majority of the electorate, it does not matter what Trump’s motives are. Much of the Republican base believes, as Trump does, that loyalty to the country and loyalty to himself are one and the same. Therefore, nothing Trump could do is corrupt, and even using his official powers for personal gain is an act of selfless patriotism. In this warped view, attempting to extort foreign countries into attacking his political rivals is not a betrayal of his responsibilities as president; it is the fullest expression of them.

Unless Republican support for Trump craters, Republican legislators will not turn against him. And Republican support for Trump cannot crater as long as many Republicans view their political rivals as illegitimate political actors rather than fellow citizens...

This - the failure to recognize and accept all Americans as part of this wide and diverse nation, the hatred for minorities and dread Other that consumed the GOP's collective heart - is one of the big reasons why I fled the Republican Party after 2000... Well after 1992 actually, but it took awhile to move myself to change voter affiliation. McCain during the 2000 primaries was the last Republican I ever supported.

This is why I've been screaming for more than a decade now for people to stop voting Republican. You're not voting for am honest political party when you do. You're not voting for an ideology worth supporting. You'll be voting for a corrupt criminal conspiracy of its own, raised on its own self-serving desires to seize all it can and punish everyone else through rage and destruction.

Gods help us. Until a majority of Americans wake up to the fact that Republicans are corrupt and at war with fellow Americans, this will get worse.

Respectful: The Passing of John McCain

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act I)

So the news came tonight that Sen. John McCain, former Presidential candidate in 2008, primary challenger in 2000, passed away from the brain cancer that plagued him his final year.

Much of McCain's biography - the reckless youth of being a Navy family brat, the wartime pilot shot down over Vietnam and tortured as a POW, the years of Arizona politics from Congressman to Senator to Presidential hopeful - will get rehashed elsewhere, here I need to speak to the personal feelings I have for the man and for the Republican Party he tried to lead for the last twenty or so years.

Back in those days, before I turned Apostate, I tried being a Republican along the moderate lines of an Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt. By 2000 that meant following McCain, who presented himself as a Reformer with regards to elections/campaigning and other issues (although on key GOP issues like abortion and tax cuts he remained devout). I followed McCain because the alternative was George W. Bush (aka Bush the Lesser), and by 2000 I had no love for the Bush family at all. Jeb in particular - pandering SOB who fell assbackwards into the Florida governorship in 1998 - had earned my personal hatred for a hundred lifetimes.

But I truly believed McCain was genuine, a possible chance at getting a Republican candidate who had the charm and political will to make effective changes. I was angry at the party sabotage of his South Carolina primary, and I regretted the fact that by the time I was in the streets of Ft. Lauderdale waving McCain signs that March that McCain had to suspend his efforts.

I will still argue - for all that I know today about McCain and all the other possibilities between then and now - that if McCain had been the GOP nominee in 2000, our nation would have been better off than the disaster that ended up being the Dubya years.

I lost a lot of admiration for him during the 2008 campaigning, when he kept pandering to the GOP deep-pockets and kept making grandiose promises that ended up being staged phoniness. I still can't believe he stood up David Letterman on the excuse of responding to the Economic Meltdown of 2007-08, only to end up getting caught on-camera preening for yet another Beltway talking head show. Why did you sink that low, boss?

But there will be moments that stick out for me, the moments when he tried to speak to our better angels during a bitter 2008 campaign, when the Far Right media was going out of its way to fearmonger about Obama. In a place and in front of people who could have turned against him, McCain spoke well of his Democratic opponent, tried to speak to a "respectful" position that tried to make it clear that while Republican and Democrat may be on opposite sides of an argument we were all still Americans:

"No, ma'am. No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about. He's not (an Arab). Thank you."

He respected others. At the end of the day, despite political pandering at times, despite sticking to agendas that were oft-times partisan, McCain kept the Faith. He kept the Faith about America and about fellow Americans and did what he could to keep his party base from going off the rails into the pit of race hatred and worse.

That and the fact McCain had a level of self-deprecating humor that made him a decent Saturday Night Live host.

It's a damn shame McCain died knowing full well the current bastard in the White House took the dark and easy path of racial pandering, the path McCain refused to take. In the end, McCain was willing to risk the loss of 2008 to retain his own integrity, an integrity the cheater in 2016 never had.

There was little love lost between McCain and trump: McCain the military man who suffered as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam, trump the goddamned draft dodger who had the discourtesy to insult McCain for being a "loser" who got caught and tortured. This is how our nation is right now: the worst possible man with political power, likely mocking the more honorable soul whose passing will be better remembered. If anything, McCain will have the last laugh: Obama was invited to speak at McCain's funeral, not trump.

I shook McCain's hand once. It might have been 2005 (maybe 2004), and it was before he broke my heart in 2008. While working at the University of Florida, I came across a setup in the Reitz Union grass plaza for a graduation ceremony and found out that he would be the honored speaker. I took a seat along one aisle, not realizing it would be the aisle where the parade would head to the stage. So there I was completely surprised and shaking his hand and telling him I voted for him in 2000 and he smiled and nodded and that was about it.

McCain will likely be the last Republican I will ever respect, even just a bit, even through all the disagreements I eventually had when he surrendered enough of his identity as a "reformer" for party power in 2008 and afterward.

I grew to regret what had happened, partly despairing that a lot of it was because his Republican Party kept sinking into that racist fearmongering morass, and that rather than reform it or abandon it to retain his honor he sank with it. But in some respects a Great Man has passed, possibly the last one who tried to save something that didn't want to be saved.

I am looking up in the sky tonight for comets. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

Let This Moderate Tell You, Republicans: There Are NO Moderates Left In Your Party

Driftglass is one of those bloggers who enjoys himself - as much as schadenfreude allows - bashing some of the more ill-informed and ill-guided media "uber-experts" who have a knack for deluding themselves as much as their targeted audiences.

And he's had a serious deep case of bashing David Brooks for some time now.

Brooks' latest attempt at convincing himself - and unlikely anybody else - of a miracle Rescue-By-Savior at the upcoming Republican convention is that the "hidden moderates" will rise up before Trump or Cruz can demolish the GOP by driving said party over the cliff. As Driftglass gloats:

Today, Mr. Brooks imagineers out of thin air an entire army of public-spirited Reasonable Republicans who will infiltrate the Republican convention in July cleverly disguised as party hacks but then -- surprise! -- cast off their fake George Wallace noses and Pat Buchanan wigs just in time to rise as one! A veritable League of Extraordinary Whig Gentlemen!

Okay, for starters, Brooks' article assumes there are that many Reasonable - which I would infer as Moderate - Republicans capable of getting tabbed to serve as delegates in the first place, and that they are able to enter the convention halls of Cleveland this summer undetected, and make their own coordinated effort to place on the general election ballot a "sane" alternative to the two fiascoes awaiting the GOP.

Never mind the open warfare that will erupt in the streets of Cleveland if Trump goes in with a confirmed delegate majority, or if Cruz gets his state-level agents - already getting placed as we speak - to rally to him on the second ballot of a contested delegate vote. The idea that a Savior candidate - who just happens to fill the need of the Establishment faction of the GOP - can just glide in despite the overwhelming primary voter anger against the Establishment is pure fantasy.

Brooks' article seems to operate on the belief that these "Lincoln" voters have all been lying in wait, biding their time to bring their own candidate to the podium... as though the last three months of these so-called voters failing to show up to vote when it mattered is all just shade getting cast to lull the Far Right conservatives into a false sense of security.

I mean, where were these voters when the Establishment's Chosen Offerings - Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Jeb! Bush, Marco Rubio - were sitting there on the primary ballots just waiting to rally these "Lincoln" voters of rational sanity and moderation to each of their banners? Unless Brooks is willing to admit that NONE of these candidates were all that "pure" for these voters to accept in the first place. But then that would imply that Brooks and his fellow media pundits pushing such candidates were horribly wrong about them anyway, which doesn't generate any confidence in Brooks' ability to predict matters here.

Here's how Brooks sees it:

The first thing the Lincoln Caucus would do is plant a flag for a different style of Republicanism. Members of the caucus would remind the country that there still are Republicans who believe in prudent globalism, reform conservative ideas to lift up the working class. There are still Republicans who believe in certain standards of polite behavior in public and pragmatic compromise...

You'll notice how Brooks doesn't really give any details what "prudent globalism" or "reform conservative ideas" are. For all we know, it's just code-talk for "Cheney-esque Foreign Policy debacles" and "Keep Cutting Taxes and Hope for the Magic Beans to Sprout Positive Growth with No Deficits".

And where the hell have these Republicans been who believe in "polite behavior" and "pragmatic compromise" in the last eight years of "You Lie!" and "let's make Obama a failed One-Termer at all costs"?

Brooks seems to think these Republicans still exist, that they are still in sufficient numbers and in places of power at the state and national level to exert enough influence to save the GOP from its' Far Right madness.

Sorry, Mr. Brooks. Let this former Moderate Republican - disgusted by the party's failures since 1992 and driven out by the madness that consumed it by 2003 - be the one to break your heart here:

THERE ARE NO MODERATE REPUBLICANS LEFT.

Blame it all on Pat Buchanan, and Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter, and Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and Grover Norquist and Dick Armey and Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck and Andrew "My Legacy of Stupid Hate Endures" Breitbart and a Far Right Noise Machine orbiting around Fox Not-News and the Drudge Report and Newsmax. Blame it on 20 years of RINO hunting, where once-proud advocates of the practices of Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller were exiled into the wastelands by the heirs of Goldwater and Reagan.

Blame it on an open Southern Strategy of bringing into the fold all the social conservatism of the Deep South, riven from the Democrats during the Civil Rights era. Blame it on the merging of the major conservative beliefs - religious, racial, financial - into one Republican Party that eagerly turned conservative belief into rigid Party-wide dogma.

What Brooks may think of as "moderate" or sane factions within the modern Republican Party are merely levels of the same Conservative bent. Peeking into the souls of the more centrist elements of the GOP is merely finding the few members of the party - the pro-Business "deregulate all and cut taxes on the uber-rich" - willing to at least remain non-committal to the extremist stuff. They'll still stand there and applaud the madness because they'll still have something to gain for their hard-core conservative ideology of "F-ck You Pay Me."

The Republican Party has no Moderates left because the voter base's obsession with turning against RINOs makes it impossible for any sitting politician to "man up" and fight for moderate principles. Every campaign race is now an attempt to convince those voters their commitment to the ever-shifting-Right core values. Even suggesting the mere possibility of a hint that our current tax rates are fine as is can become cause for a more extremist primary challenger to rise up against you. And win that primary, because poor voter turnout guarantees only the hard-core extremist voters show up anymore.

So NO, Mr. Brooks, there is no Lincoln Caucus waiting for you in Cleveland to save your precious Republican Party from itself. The Republican Party as you want it to be is dead. Has been for years. You needed to start composing the eulogy back in 2006, and it's ten years gone.

The Pros and Cons of Letting The Con Man Play

Read an interesting article from Infidel753 today about the tasty burger that is the Republican Party meltdown over the Trump.

He asks right there in the headline "Should We Root for Trump?"  We being the non-crazy Americans - Liberal, Independent, Moderate, Progressive, even the small-c conservative who honestly aren't evil, however we label ourselves - who absolutely refuse to vote for a racist, ignorant demagogue con artist... who nonetheless are intrigued by the idea that a candidate Trump can sink the Republican Party under the weight of its decades-long sins:

How should we react to this?  Some liberals are rooting for Trump on the grounds that he would be the easiest candidate for our own nominee to defeat.  It's the Akin scenario on a national scale -- we should want the Republican to be outrageously offensive because it guarantees that the Democrat will win.

As Infidel notes, it's not Trump alone who should worry the sane voters: the entire Republican field of choices is full of scary ideologues (Cruz, Huckabee), bullies (Christie), frauds (Jeb, Rubio), fools (Jeb, Carson), and con artists (Carly, Kasich). As he puts it "Yes, Trump would be worse than the others, but any Republican as President would be an intolerable disaster.  We must stay focused on preventing it.  Ebola is worse than smallpox, but the point is, you don't want to get either one."

It's just that Trump brings to this election cycle an extreme amount of schadenfreude - especially this this ex-Republican apostate - that makes it impossible to argue in favor for a saner choice (Which would be a candidate with enough brain cells - Kasich, maybe Christie - to recognize some value in a functioning federal government). In this case, I want - a good number of non-wingnuts want - to see what happens when the Republican Far Right base gets exactly the candidate they want in Trump... and watch him derail/implode in the biggest electoral disaster since Walter Mondale.

Trump may be in the lead for now - and can well win all the Primaries he wants - but there is a big difference between the campaign within the Republican ranks vs. whomever he faces in the general election (Hillary). Pandering to the extremist base in the Primary season is a must: When it gets to be time to win over the Moderate/Independent Middle, you can't be an extremist candidate because those 40-50 percent of Primary voters you got drop down to 30-35 percent of overall voters when you increase the population for the general election.

And Trump has campaigned so far to the Right Wing on key issues - anti-immigration, bullying our allies and enemies alike, a laughable budget plan, an overall rejection of civic virtues - that it's insane to think he can switch to more Moderate stances in September/October (not without alienating the Far Right that brought him to the dance). There's a reason why experienced elected officials never went straight to the Hater Agenda the way Trump did: the extremist base may never have liked watching their candidates "wimp out" by easing back on the throttle after the Primaries end, but it worked every so often for the candidates (Bill Clinton in 1992, Dubya in 2000, Obama in 2008) who could pull that trick off. The candidates who stayed extremist (Goldwater in 1964, McGovern in 1972, Mondale in 1984) tended to crash and burn (although to be fair to McGovern, Nixon cheated in 1972).

What's happening to the Republicans this election cycle is an angry voting base that's tired of backing candidates the Establishment leaders kept propping up only to get knocked down. There's that belief that McCain in 2008 just wasn't "pure" enough (despite the fact the GOP brand was poison after the Bush the Lesser debacles: even Reagan couldn't have won in 2008 with that angry electorate). There's near certainty among the base that Mitt Romney in 2012 wasn't "pure" enough a Conservative to win. All the while the base was told how their opponent Obama was "weak" and "a failure" and doomed to lose, and yet there he was winning both elections. The extremist base doesn't want a compromising "safe" candidate to go three-for-three (we call that a strikeout around these parts): This time, they'll choose the candidate who's clearly standing for their hard-core principles to confirm once and for all their "perfect" Conservative ideology wins with the right standard-bearer.

So that's the best reason to let Trump become the Republican nominee. Give that Far Right base the candidate and platform they desire... and then watch that crash and burn worse than any result McCain or Mitt got. Does the Far Right base believe True Conservatism can never fail? Give them the "truest" candidate they think they got in Trump pushing his Hater agenda... and here's hoping 45 states go for Hillary with 60 percent of the popular vote. It would be one hell of a slap across the collective face of the Far Right to fall that low.

Infidel does bring up one troubling problem with this: It's nice to think in that situation Hillary - or any Democratic nominee, including O'Malley - mops up the floor with Trump and the Republican wingnuts. Thing is, there are no guarantees.

If Trump does win the Republican nomination he's got at best a 50-50 shot of becoming President (at which point the whole world is screwed, and that scenario needs discussing another day). Anything can happen: After all, George W. Bush "won" in 2000 thanks to a close election and bad ballots and a rigged Supreme Court. Truman won against an overconfident Republican flank in 1948. For all we know, Bernie Sanders could flip out in October by going mad and swimming off to the South Pole to be a penguin and leave the Democrats in the lurch. Crazier things have happened (I think).

Trump may be one of the most unliked candidates of all time, but he's still got enough supporters to get past the finish line for Cleveland... and if push comes to shove the Republican faithful - even the ones who didn't vote for him in the Primaries - will still vote the party line (See Rude Pundit's take on the 2014 Midterm results). As a final horrifying thought, never underestimate a con artist like Trump to still find a way to sweet-talk himself into a deal.

As Infidel notes, this is a high-risk yet high-reward scenario: Trump runs the slight chance of becoming President Trump (GAAAAHHhh), but Trump also runs the likelier chance of dragging the entire Republican Party into a black hole.

Just think about how that will happen. Trump wins most of the Primaries on a harsh anti-immigration platform that alienates Hispanic voters across the nation. Where there was 80 percent (roughly) Hispanics leaning Democrat the last two election cycles, this time they'll vote Democrat at Black voter levels of 95-98 percent. They'll have to: facing near certainty of a Trump Presidency ruining their lives, most Hispanics are going to vote against him and any Republican ally. Don't forget this: Asian voters are a smaller overall population, but they'll likely go the same way because Trump's anti-China, anti-Muslim rants will add onto worries over immigration reform as well. And despite the high number of older Whites - especially males - who would likely vote Republican this 2016, Whites in general are not a homogeneous bloc: There's a lot of White voters who are pro-immigration who also refuse to bash Muslims as a faith.

A Trump Presidency campaign will affect the entire GOP ballot, because the Presidential agenda set by the nominee becomes the party's national platform. Candidates for the lesser seats can't well campaign on their own platform with Trump blaring his harsher one across the same TV channels. In an election cycle where a lot of Republican Senator seats - 24 GOP seats compared to 10 Dem - are up for vote, the Republicans risk the chance most Toss-up Purple and Leans Blue states will switch to the Democratic party - even a Red state or three could go Dem - thanks to Trump angering/horrifying enough voters to reject the entire ticket. And while the US House is "safe" in terms of pro-Republican gerrymandering, if Trump really angers the general electorate even those "safe" seats in the House can end up for grabs if the Democrats consider challenging them.

Granted from my perspective, the Republican platform - of massive tax cuts for the rich, massive deregulation of public health and safety needs, massive expansion of overseas combat and hostile actions against "rogue" nations, and repealing a moderately successful healthcare program - is already a toxic platform regardless which candidate will sell it in November, but Trump selling it will really hurt the GOP's entire national campaign. He's not that good a snake-oil salesman when he tries selling to people who won't buy it.

An electoral result in November that gives the White House to Hillary Clinton and a 54-seat control of the Senate to the Democrats - Dems need to keep their ten seats and win five at least for 51-seat control, so guessing that the Dems will get more seats than the minimum is a healthy guess to make - and weakening the House to a barely-held GOP majority is a likely result if Trump becomes the candidate. Hillary plus the Senate gives the Democrats a four-year window to choose possible Supreme Court vacancies (there are three sitting Justices over the age of 80 right now) that can flip SCOTUS more Left by 2020 and keep it there for another 20 years.

Just to note: That scenario is not the Best-Likely one for Democrats, it's the Likeliest one if Trump becomes the Republican candidate.

Which is why the Far Right media elites in the National Review epistemic bubble went all-in this weekend with a special edition magazine that flat-out states on the cover "Against Trump" in a near-hilarious, confusing, self-defeating effort to try and rescue their Conservative dogma, as though they can attack and isolate Trump before he co-opts their identity and flushes it down the toilet.

But it's too late, isn't it? Like Jeet Heer and Driftglass and John Cole and a lot of others have been saying over the years, this is what the Far Right has become and has consumed the entire Republican Party to be this way. It's not so much that Trump is a con artist who seized control of the Republican Party, it's that he's a con artist who's able to sell his sh-t to the Republican Party and have a large segment of the ill-informed, angered-up base eat it up like chocolate.

We're talking about a voting base that's been stoked, lied to, angered up by a Conservative media campaign since the Clinton years to buy into this purist Far Right fantasy of a permanent Republican majority ruling over a Utopian landscape of God, Guns and Tax Cuts. The Republican voters could have easily rejected Trump's sales pitch towards that Utopian fantasy at any time if they truly reflected the public sentiment - or political sense - of the Republican elites. But that's the thing: they ARE reflecting the sentiment - the arrogance, the disdain for others especially the minorities and the poor - that the party has been pushing since 1994 1964. The Republican voters with Trump as their golden calf just aren't hiding it anymore.

And that is why in the end - even with the high risk of a President Trump this November - it may be necessary for Trump to be the Republican nominee this election cycle. It is the only way to get this rubbish out in the open for it to get nuked from orbit once and for all (well, for at least the rest of this century).

At least, that's MY Utopian fantasy. I know in my heart the reality of the election results are going to be messy, and that the run-up to the November election will be a nail-biter (look back to how I was panicking in 2012). I know voter turnout is going to be key, and that the Democrats (and left-leaning Independents) need to turn out in higher numbers than ever before this year.

But it's got to be done. No more hiding, no more illusions. No more of the Far Right wingnuts trying to lie to themselves that it was a candidate they didn't want - like McCain, like Mitt, like Dubya when his polling numbers tanked after 2005 - that lost for them. The Republicans have got to have the ass-kicking they deserve, and it needs to be their guy getting his ass kicked in public.

So let Trump win this June. And then stomp his lying, shilling, racist ass this November, along with the rest of a Republican Party that no longer cares about this nation's citizenry.

Looking Forward At the Coming GOP Madness, Looking Back To See How Long The Madness Has Already BEEN Here

So I'm reading Driftglass' blog today and come across an article where he calls to task David Frum - conservative pundit of intraparty renown - for Frum's refusal to own up for causing the modern Republican Party to slide into batshit insanity:

As a former Dubya speechwriter and author of such books as The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush and An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (with the monstrous Richard Perle)  Mr. David Frum is well-positioned to write a long article for The Atlantic (where he is now employed as a Senior Editor, because that is how the world works) about how fucked up the Republican party is...

...without any unpleasant or inconvenient references as to how it got that way.

Mr. Frum's article gives the reader a decent snapshot of what is happening right now inside moldering corpse of the Party of Lincoln, but it is also carefully calculated to leave the impression that the GOP just wandered in from out of town sometime around 2009, fully formed and neatly bisected between a hapless, out-of-touch donor class... and just-plain-white-folks who have grown intractably bitter and cynical for some reason.

Driftglass then pulls up a commentary he left on another blog back in 2005 as an example how far back in current history the progressive left has been screaming about this oncoming storm of racist logic-defying ignorance:

For the Suburban Gated, the non-deranged gunnies and the Tax Cuts Uber Alles Republicans, it’s all jolly good fun having a romp with the Fundies…as long as they keep delivering the 20% margin the GOP must have to win anything and as long as they stay the fuck away from my house and family, its all just good kinky fun…

…until the sun comes up, and you realize that the Electoral Candy you were offered was just bait to get you into the Windowless Fundy Panel Truck. Oops.

And now you’re waaaay out in the country somewhere you don’t recognize without your pants, and you start to figure out that all the Burning Crosses and Swastikas and Apocalyptic Paraphernalia that tricks out the inside of the van isn't tatted-up Goth Chick posturing.

Which got me remembering, Hey back in 2004 I had been pointing out some of this crazy stuff myself.

I wasn't blogging back then, but I had been paying for webspace with an address and had posted a page or three about my political leanings (I let it fall to disuse because I lost my employment in 2008 and am still too poor to re-fund the domain ownership). During the run-up to the 2004 Presidential election, I made a two-column chart about who should and who shouldn't be voting for Dubya and the Republican platform. If I go to the Wayback Machine, let me pull that page up and copy it here:

Those With Reason to Support Bush		Those Who Want Bush Gone (or ought to)
Religious/Social Conservatives		Gays
Bush projects a public image of devout religious belief, using that to define his position of fighting as Good against the Evil of terrorism. He's promoting an amendment to define marriage as between a man and woman only (meaning gays/lesbians will be denied). He pushes a lot of 'faith-based' initiatives, and pushes for more church interaction with government services. He's on their side of the Culture War being fought in this country.		Are you kidding me? He's practically declared war on you! His Defense of Marriage amendment doesn't really defend marriage at all (uh, guys, where's the provisions on stopping adultery and divorce and domestic violence?). His pandering to social conservatives on this issue ought to let you realize which side of the Culture War he's on (hint: it's not yours). You're his favorite target outside of Saddam (you probably rank higher than that one guy whose name he doesn't even mention anymore). There's a reason why the Log Cabin Republicans openly refused to support the GOP candidate this year: they've backed the others even when they were being lambasted, but boy-o this time....
		Religious/Social Liberals
		There are faiths in this country that agree to the idea of the Separation of Church and State, and a good number of churches were appalled when the Bush/Cheney campaign recently asked them to forward their parish directories to the campaign for fund-raising purposes (seeming violation of that Separation concept). Not all Christians, and certainly not all faiths, are comfortable with the way Bush expresses his beliefs when it comes to political decisions (Muslims were outraged when he called the War on Terror a 'Crusade': it's still a sore point between Christians and Muslims).
The Immensely Wealthy		Fiscal Conservatives
"I call you my base." Bush was only half-joking, or even not at all, when he said that: he plays to and receives a lot of support from this particular group. His tax cuts benefit the wealthy most of all, and he pushes for more cuts (especially cutting taxes on dividends) that would generate more wealth. This group has already proven their devotion by helping raise more money for his campaign than any other Presidential campaign ever.		Fiscal Conservatives take one look at that deficit Dubya's been running for 4 years and suddenly start thinking socialist. While Fiscals like the tax cuts that Bush pushed, they abhor the massive spending that SHOULDN'T HAVE OCCURRED with the cuts that were made. Fiscals are thinking about how the economy is going to be affected 10 years, even 5 years down the road thanks to all the uncontrolled pork It's this group within the GOP party faithful that has been making the most griping noises without openly questioning Bush's competence, but it's there and the discontent is brewing (when Fortune magazine starts op-editing that the Dems should control either the White House or Congress to re-establish a balance of power with the checkbook, that's a huge honking sign of discontent among the Fiscals).
'Neoconservatives'		Pat Buchanan ('Paleoconservatives')
And why not? This has been their administration. 9/11 their Pearl Harbor. Aggressive foreign policy backed by the US War Machine. Who cares for subtlety and diplomacy? Old Europe, that's who. Meanwhile, WE'RE getting the bad guys: Iraq (done), Iran (next), Syria (on the list), North Korea (okay, so China's a bit of problem on that one), and...and...		Well, Pat's always been a bit bitter, but still... This group should actually be known as the Isolationists, the ones who think America shouldn't go empire-building/nation-building (in their minds one and the same). While they wouldn't have sat still after 9/11, they would have only stopped at Afghanistan and securing Osama's sorry butt for execution. They recognize foreign policy as a more demanding requirement in assuring the US doesn't get hurt again (an America First position), and actually do respect the Old Europe governments (on which they believe our government should be modeled). Buchanan has been the biggest non-Democrat to openly and consistently question Bush's war in Iraq, and clearly shows no love for the guy.
Ann Coulter		Democrats
Her position: Anything not Republican should be executed for treason. No, really, read her stuff, then wash your eyes with holy water.		Let's see: Bush steals the 2000 election thanks to a GOP-controlled Supreme Court; he claims to be a 'uniter' but shuts you guys out from providing any input; his buddies in Congress hack into your records and find out your talking points on issues, giving them an advantage in any debates you can muster; his buddy DeLay openly redraws the congressional voting districts in Texas to give the Republicans the advantage (in some cases drawing gerrymandered districts that would give mapmakers hissyfits); you've been labeled traitors and liberals and un-American by third-party proxy. Sure you don't want to vote Kerry all the way...?
		Blacks
		Al Sharpton is a blowhard, but he did get one thing right at the Dem convention: the Republicans have abandoned and ignored this voting block for years. The GOP's Southern Strategy has essentially turned the Republicans from the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Thurmond. Civil rights and social issues that are of paramount concern to Blacks are not on the list at all for this administration. Government spending has gone up (see deficit) but social services that minorities rely on have been slashed.
Saudis		Iraqis / Arabs
The specifics of this relationship are classified and deemed 'NATIONAL SECURITY'. Any attempt to request this data will have you identified as a threat to our security. You have been warned.		Sure. Saddam's gone. But there's a lot of people still dying in Iraq, either from bombing raids by US troops or from the inter-community fighting between various militia groups rising up to seize control of this city and that. Bush didn't really do a good job liberating your country, did he? In the meanwhile, if you're Arab in this country, expect your phones to be tapped, your refrigerator wired for sound, your job under surveillance, and your cousins and brothers locked away without warrant and without access to lawyers (unless you are already there in the undisclosed 'detention center'...but then you wouldn't be able to read this...or anything else while that potato sack is over your head...). Just keep the image of the Iraqi Soccer Team telling Bush not to use them for getting re-elected (and these guys really suffered under Uday) as a reminder of how Arabs REALLY feel.
		Hispanics
		Of the groups here, yours is the hardest to nail down as either/or. Hispanics tend to be more socially conservative than other minorities in the US. However, there's still a lot of Hispanics needing social services that Bush's administration doesn't take care of. There's also that illegal immigration policy he supported a while back that most illegal immigrants (as well as immigration experts) claimed made things worse. Of this group, when broken down to nationality, only the Cubans can be counted on to vote Bush/Republican (and even then, guys? He got rid of Saddam. Castro's still sitting there. Until Havana starts drilling up oil, Shrub ain't interested).
		Families of the Military and National Guard
		Bush has assigned your men and women, your sons and daughters, your mothers and fathers, into war zones. That was expected, after all, it's the military, it's their job. But the administration's mismanagement of the Iraqi invasion has forced your loved ones to extended tours far longer than expected, has brought shame on the image of the military by encouraging torture of Iraqi prisoners, and for National Guard families cut hard into your home budgets because those serving were also the primary bread-winners in most families (National Guard was/is reservist duty: these guys have other jobs and responsibilities after all). That same mismanagement of the war and occupation also means your loved ones are undersupplied, running out of vital materials or not even garnering access to needed equipment. The administration also isn't doing or saying much in the way of respect for the dead and wounded: the Bush admin is actively hiding the coffins of our honored dead, and when was the last time you saw Bush or Rumsfeld or Cheney or even an undersecretary visit the wounded for a photo op? There are now reports of troops being threatened to re-up with the army or else find themselves immediately transferred to units being sent to Iraq, which means they'll be forced to stay in the army anyway. Any surprise there? This will be much like the draft, when you had guys in the service not wanting to be there being forced to do stuff they didn't want to do. The resentment levels will be off the charts, and the quality of service will suffer. All because Rumsfeld and his 'experts' underplanned the war effort, believing they could do with less manpower than more, and now that they're stuck needing more manpower they're overusing the troops getting tired of it all.
		Veterans
		Oh, yeah, Bush has been showing the love, hasn't he? He's shown a lot of respect for McCain and Cleland and Kerry for the service they committed in 'Nam, hasn't he? And to top it off, there's been, what, how much money cut from veterans' benefits? Oh, yeah, he's really taking care of you guys...Dad, you're a veteran. Haven't YOU noticed anything wrong with your benefits yet...?
Sadists		Torture Victims
Hey, any administration that condones torture in some way ain't all that half-bad. By the way, are they hiring...?		Abu Ghraib. Plus the fact that evidence has shown the men photographed during torture turned out to be either common criminals (not terrorists) or utterly innocent (again, not terrorists). Plus the fact that his administration showed no respect for national/international law by finding ways to condone and encourage torture.
		Librarians
		This one isn't so much directed at Bush as it is his administration, specifically AG John Ashcroft. His campaign to classify government documents and pull them from gov't depositories and libraries ticks off a lot of librarians who believe open access to information is a right under the First Amendment. Especially when said documents aren't related to security issues but to litigation issues (why prevent people from knowing how to file civil suits?). But the fact the whole administration practices secrecy and evasion and refusal toward any information requests suggests this is a philosophy starting from the top dog himself. The biggest surprise is that there ARE librarians (???) supporting Bush's efforts to clamp down on knowledge. Sheesh. At least it's only 5 of em. The 100,000-plus rest of us are not amused by this shrub...
Halliburton Embezzlers		The Middle Class (what's left of it)
More no-bid contracts. More getting troops to spend money on food and supplies already paid for. More billing to the government on things done once but paid for thrice. More talking to other companies providing services into kicking back some fees to us. More money. More money. More money. Hey, let's hire that guy who used to work at Enron! He's good for business...!		See that tax cut Bush promised you? It's pretty much $800 per year, right? Considering the top one percent of the wealth holders get about $50,000 in tax cuts, you're getting bought off awfully cheap by this administration, aren't you? Oh, and by the way, we're going to have to let you go because it's cheaper to hire...nobody, we'll just get another tax break and corporate credit from Bush and live off the embez...uh, profits for a few years. Good luck using monster.com! If there's class warfare going on, guys, the upper class is winning in a shut-out.
		Job Hunters
		Losing jobs is nothing new: it's a part of the economic system we use in this country. Outsourcing jobs to other countries is inevitiable and a well-known fact (oddly, the jobs were supposed to be outsourced to Mexico, not India, but I digress). The deal is, there's supposed to be a steady form of job growth to keep up with the level of job loss to ensure people can stay employed (at good wages). Under Bush, there's been very little job growth, far below the projected growth levels. Enough experts have declared this to be one of the weakest job markets in years. Yet Bush doesn't have a specific plan on job creation/job growth (he's more into promoting investing, private ownership, and self-sufficiency).
Pharmaceuticals		The Elderly (Medicare)
Pricing fixing? Nah, never heard of it. By the way, we're going to get Bush to close down the border to Canada to stop you cheapskates from crossing over and getting a $200 US bottle of aspirin for $2.99 Canadian.		Wonderful Medicare package. Not only does it add more bloat to the deficit, it restricts your ability to shift to potentially cheaper or more reliable services, it adds more paperwork and card IDs to keep up with, does nothing to reduce the costs of pills and meds, and essentially ticks off everyone except for the drug companies. And that still doesn't include the fact that Bush's people LIED ABOUT THE COSTS when Congress considered the package...!
		Victims of neurological disorders (stem cell research)
		Bush's adamant opposition to expand the strict limits he imposed on stem cell research (he limited it to pre-existing strands, which turned out to be mostly useless) has hurt attempts to develop cures for Alzheimers and Parkinsons. His opposition comes purely from the fact that stem cells only come from fertilized eggs, meaning the extraction of stem cells a form of abortion. Other countries that do not share such concerns have begun work into stem cell research while the US, obstensibly the leader in science on the planet, has its collective thumbs tied. While a compromise of sorts is available (working with embryos from couples that have already successfully used artificial insemination to carry a child to term (thus fulfilling religious requirement to multiply), and that said embryos can only be donated to ensure people don't do it for money), his strict religious belief (and political support of that) refuses to let him even consider that.
Tom DeLay		Republicans in Congress who were repeatedly LIED TO over the Medicare package, Iraqi WMD, Abu Ghraib, and pretty much everything else
I'd include Zell Miller in this, but I don't want him challenging me to a duel so...		Okay, don't you guys get it yet? He doesn't respect you or your input. Even as leader of the party he should still respect you enough to listen to advise and commentary from the ranks, but outside of his Inner Circle he doesn't hear a damn thing. All he wants you to do is rubber-stamp his pork and his tax cuts and his War on Countries That Have Oil Halliburton Can Steal. He doesn't have exchanges of ideas, he issues marching orders. Try to remember: Leadership and Loyalty are earned, not enforced.
		Environmentalists
		The Kyoto accords: yes, it was unfairly tilted to already-developed countries such as the US, but we have yet to offer a reasonable alternative or stuck to our own environmental program. Scientific studies proving the increase of pollutants, and threat of such pollutants in our air and water, are routinely ignored, re-written, abused, shredded, filed under X for 'Lost', and then deemed classified by Ashcroft so that libraries can't shelve them. Then there's the arctic drilling that gets environmentalists into a tizzy. Bush makes James Watt look like a tree-hugger.
		Scientists and Doctors in nearly every field of knowledge
		See Environmentalists. Your studies into human health and psychology, the severe threat of Global AIDS, all of that...Bush won't read 'em unless you already tack to HIS view of things. Since a lot of experts DON'T tack to HIS view of things, said reports are filed under X for 'Lost' along with the environmental warnings.
		Educators / School children
		The No-Child-Left-Behind program seems to be leaving a lot of children behind. There is growing evidence that the school voucher system always promoted by Republicans isn't working the way they'd claimed, and even though Bush publicly supports his education programs he's been caught cutting funds to said programs (and yet we've got a big-ass deficit? Just where is the money going if not to our kids? Anybody got the accounting ledger?). Teachers wages' still stink, schools are still crumbling and outdated, and our kids kant speel anymore.
		Those who abhor incompetence
		The Bush administration makes far too many mistakes, shuffles the blame towards others rather than admit to their own, attack and accuse their critics rather than answer the questions, leak information on people to embarrass them (and in the process break the law), and claims effective leadership even when half the country, and most of the world, hates their guts for the bloodshed, misery and anger coming from all the mistakes they've made. Even Clinton never got accused of this level of incompetence. The last administration to look this sloppy, inept and corrupt?! Warren Harding's (hey, even Nixon did things right...well, other than Watergate...). Here's something you should be asking yourselves. All sitting Presidents running for a second term always ask this question: "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?" Has anyone noticed that Bush/Cheny HAS NOT asked this question, or even answered it in any way? That's because we're NOT better off: the economy is too shaky, the job market too feeble, our military stretched thin, our national security weakened (and this is supposed to be their strong suit! The 'They've Made Us Safe' argument. Really? Are we? Just look at that Dept. of Homeland Security and its failures and understaffing...), our allies too few, and our future too dispiriting. And they're asking us to give them four more years of this crap?!?!

--

Again, that was what I wrote back in 2004, when I had become "disenchanted" with the Republicans and had dropped out to be NPA. Looking back, I really wasn't exaggerating about what I saw coming out of the GOP and their inept handling of nearly every issue - economy, social equality, environment, the war effort, the illegal use of torture, the sheer unpleasantness of the Bush the Lesser administration - and in some ways a lot of those sins have never been resolved.

And that was before the Katrina disaster truly exposed the Bush/Cheney people for what they were: uncaring, self-serving screw-ups.

And what I wrote in 2004 is still true today, only worse. Even in the face of gay marriage equality, the Republicans wage war against that. Even with the reality that our immigration policies need urgent reforms, the Republicans would rather pursue inhumane and wastefully expensive efforts in a racist, ham-fisted way. Even with our economy still shaky and our nation's personal debt woes left unanswered, the Republicans would prefer unleashing economic chaos that would bring back the horrors of the Great Recession of 2007-09. Even with the nation's citizenry becoming more left-leaning and progressive, the Republicans are convinced to go further right on every social and economic issue.

I'm looking at what I wrote for 2004 and see so much of it still applies in 2015: the Republicans are at war with immigrants and Hispanics, Muslims, women, the college-age, Blacks, the environment (hell, the totality of science and facts), our educational system, our civil liberties, our tastes in music and movies, our health care needs, our children's needs... hell, let me just list it as "The Republicans are at war with everything."

So why should it be any surprise to Frum - or to anyone else with the Republican establishment and media apologists - that their war is starting to cause blowback within their own ranks? That their war, using terms of absolute US vs. THEM, would devolve into shouting, racial slurs, and outright violence?

Driftglass is right about how everyone else in the Real World was calling this more than a decade ago. It's a pity we're facing a future of this all because now that the bill's come due Frum and his fellow conservatives aren't able or willing to pay the costs to fix their own wreckage.

RIP Republican Party 1856 - 2015

(Update: Hello to the Crooks and Liars readers!  Hope you enjoy reading my blog!  Check back in, I should have a Drinking Game rules for the September GOP Debate up this weekend...)

What we once called the Republican Party here in the United States is officially dead.

Oh, the dying has been going on for some time, and in public view for the world to see.  It's just nobody did anything to stop it, and indeed far too many people within the ranks of the party encouraged and hastened the demise.

The structure and body of the Republican Party still remains, of course: however, the soul and spirit that once animated this august body has now departed.  What we have left is a shambling ghoul, with enough brain power to endlessly loop the same one-liner bursts of outrage but unable to perform more recognizable human traits such as empathy, adaptability, and long-range planning.

The Republicans began in the mid-1850s to fill the vacuum of the dying Whig Party at the most tumultuous period in American history.  While the party took on many of the Whig traits - a federalized Union, pro-business merchant/industrial class which required increased education and improved transportation networks (aka massive construction projects) - it also rallied around a radical agenda opposed to chattel slavery.  This became the singular trait of the party as the threat of slavery - driven by the southern states led by the upper class Democratic Party slaveowners -  spread to all states including ones that had been Free states for generations.

The fights between the Democrats and the Republicans in the 1850s revolved around: whether slavery should spread into Western territories, whether Northern states should assist Southern states in detaining any Blacks that Southerners accused of being runaways, whether slavery should even exist as it violated various concepts of religious and social decency.  To the Democrats, led by rich Southern slaveowners who could not comprehend a world without cheap labor to fuel their cotton empires, the call to end slavery came across as a call to their destruction.  To the Republicans, led by religious and civil rights leaders who could not accept the evils of physical and spiritual abuse, the push to spread slavery was a horror akin to war.

Those opposing views - intractable, uncompromising - led to war, the bloodiest our nation had ever seen.  The results of that war solidified the Republicans as the political power of the nation well into the 20th Century and kept the Democrats as a secondary yet stabilizing political presence that held onto power at a regional level through populist efforts and reactionary (Jim Crow) fervor.  By 1900, we as a nation were stuck with a two-party system, which keeps the balance.

There's another thing to mention called the Iron Law of Oligarchy: that any organization in a democratic/republican form of government will evolve into a group that serves its "oligarchic tendencies" (that is, it serves the needs of the elites rather than the needs of the lower-rung members).  A variation on that Law is that any party or organization reaches a moment where that group must either compromise on its founding principles to survive as an organization, or else collapse upon itself.

In the American system of governance, compromise was built into the process in the first place: the entire system of checks and balances is supposed to ensure that the three branches work in harmony, and when the factions of party emerged the rules were tweaked and re-enforced to ensure the checks and balances would make the parties aim for bipartisanship.  It becomes an issue of which oligarchs hold sway over other oligarchs to maintain a balance, through which they keep the lower classes mollified with reasonable laws and policies.

Most of the times, this worked: whenever needed, a shift in the political paradigms allowed one party to gain favor and enact reforms.  The Progressive Era of the early 20th Century, for example, was when reformer factions in both parties were able to direct legislation that fixed most corrupt practices in business and politics and also led to serious reforms such as the women's vote.

But something changed.  A restructuring of the parties after the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s led to a realignment of party ideologies.  Where conservative and liberal values were split between Republican and Democratic as social, religious, and economic agendas - Republicans were economic conservative and social liberal, Democrats were social conservative and economic liberal - in 1968 the Republicans made the conscious decision to court all conservative thought into their own ranks.

It was called the Southern Strategy, because the Democrats had gone in on passing civil liberties laws that alienated their Southern factions left over from the Civil War.  Rather than let those Southern votes alienate themselves into a regional third-party element (the Dixiecrats of 1948), the Republicans realized they could count on those voters as a cohesive bloc that would secure state and legislative powers and even the occasional Presidential win.

As a result, the Republican Party became more conservative on ALL issues, and those issues began to intermingle to where economic policy blended into religious policy and overwhelmed social policy.  Where there were points of moderation, of seeking common ground between ideological poles, the Republicans shifted Hard Right on all gears and kept going Right.

The conservative media keeps calling the strategy a "myth" or a liberal lie - and like to point out that it used to be Democrats who relied on such a strategy during the New Deal era - but the evidence is pretty strong (Hi, Lee Atwater!) over the decades that the Republicans made the moves to court and hold such voters, and to pander to them to win elections.

The Republicans keep priding themselves on being "The Party of Lincoln" yet it's been the Republicans since the 1990s who have actively sought to suppress voting rights for Blacks.

The Republicans keep pushing their own goalposts, resetting the ideological purity for their party so far Right Wing that the party no longer respects the very concept of bipartisanship, no longer considers the need for checks and balances within government to promote compromise and acceptance of issue resolutions by the majority.

As a result, we're seeing the proof of that Iron Law of Oligarchy.  Where a party must choose between survival by compromise or else self-destruct by adhering to dogma.  Rather than survive by compromise as parties did before to continue onward, the Republicans are now choosing self-destruction much in the same way the Southern Democratic leadership did back in 1860 when they chose secession over dealing with a Lincoln-led Republican victory.

The Republicans are openly choosing to nuke from orbit any much-needed immigration reforms.  The drum-beats by Trump and now pretty much the whole Presidential primary field - which will dictate the entire party's platform going into 2016 - has been one of racist demagoguery of Hispanics.  The party is pretty much burning down every bridge to a voting bloc the party was desperate to win over after their losses in 2012 proved that ethnic group was needed for elections at the national level.

The Republicans are openly running against immigration reforms that a majority - or at least a plurality - of Americans want to make it easier for immigrants to come legally to the U.S. and apply for citizenship.  The only thing the Republicans take away from that polling is just the "enforcement" part of border security, which they want to implement by building Trump's Wall (and creating a black market on high ladders and tunnel diggers) as a costly boondoggle (and no, Mexico WILL NOT pay for your damn wall, Donald).

And now the Republicans are making a mockery of our Constitution by openly calling for repeals of the 14th Amendment and its citizenship clause.  They want to end "birthright citizenship" at the expense of alienating hundreds of thousands of existing citizens - four of whom are primary candidates! - and also threaten the very concept of citizenship for millions of Americans those conservatives would well seek to purge as "Un-American" if they ever got the chance.

And there's even spokespersons among the media conservatives openly calling for slavery (!) - effectively ignoring the 13th Amendment - imposed on illegals as though that would be a good thing.

What had been two of the signature achievements of the early Republican Party -back when the Republicans were those who championed civil rights - are now sitting targets for Republican ire and proposed destruction.

And I haven't even touched on how the Republicans are calling for an end to women's right to vote.

All because the Republican Party isn't the Republican Party anymore.

It's the Southern Slaveowner Party.  Back from the ashes of 1865 and hoping to tear the United States apart again.

This is what you are now, people.  You aren't the Party of Lincoln or Grant or Teddy Roosevelt.  You're the Party of John C. Calhoun.  You're openly calling for an end to voting rights for people not from your tribe, you're openly race-baiting anymore, you're openly calling for a return to slavery as a means of social and economic dominance.

The Republican Party is dead.  All that's running in its place now is an imposter force looking to con more voters.

When Beltway Media Is Out of the Loop

There is something tangible to the "what the hell happened" response of the mainstream media this week, all involving the combined fascination and fear the media elites have with Teh Trumpster.

After the Republican leaders and most of the Washington DC power circles attacked Trump for going after one of their beloved own - Senator McCain - the prognosticators and experts and talking heads were crowing that Trump had finally gone too far, had insulted a hero POW, was likely to lose supporters from the vast number of Vietnam War vets and other vets who leaned Republicans.

Instead, Trump's polling numbers have stayed well in the 20 percentile - give or take a few points - and remains in a clear lead among the Republican primary candidates.  We're all - guilty party here alongside the Beltway media elites - talking Trump (even as we're all in the need for bathing in holy water once we walk away from the blog writing).

The media probably couldn't understand why, although I kinda figured Trump wasn't going to get hurt at all by going after McCain.  Because he wasn't so much going after John McCain the Vietnam Navy pilot, he was going after John McCain the Media Darling.

Look, back in the day before the Republican Party got to be too insane even for me, I backed McCain, I liked him as a candidate in 2000 mostly because he wasn't Dubya (by that time my ire for the Bush clan due to Jeb was greater than anything else) and partly because he showed bipartisan efforts as a Senator.  Problem with him now is, I swear McCain gets invited to Sunday talk shows every week.  He's become a go-to interview subject for the mainstay political roundtables to where he's over-saturated the market.  They - the media elite - hang on his every word even when he's not the real guy they ought to be interviewing on that given topic.  They act like he really won the Presidency in 2008 or something.  It's gotten annoying, even to a former fanboy like me who will on occasion forgive McCain for the sad-but-unavoidable pandering he did to win the GOP nomination back then (I do, in fact, absolve him of making the horrific move of picking Palin for the Veep spot: he wanted someone the party wouldn't take, so he went either out of spite or frustration for a complete unknown whose governing record wasn't deep enough to reveal how much of a loon she was.  I blame a poor vetting system and a party obsessed with image over competency...).  Anyhoo.

THAT is the guy - the Interview All-Hours-Of-The-Day McCain - Trump was really targeting: Trump was pointing out how McCain's reputation was vastly inflated all because of his years in a POW camp.  And most of the Trump fanbase knew that.  A good amount of the Republican voting base knew that: it may surprise the media elites to know that McCain is not all that popular to the Tea Party and Far Right crowds.

It's amazing how an entire profession - media people, whose backgrounds are supposed to be in journalism and are supposed to handle information and data on a regular basis - can be so clueless, out-of-touch, and misinformed about a lot of things about their own nation, their own audiences.

I'm amazed but not surprised.  I've known for over a decade that the higher-end of the media power structure - the national media, the cable and nightly newspeople - have been disconnected from the general public ever since the Lewinsky scandal.  How the talking heads were all predicting doom for Bill Clinton, that he had to resign for having betrayed everyone (mostly themselves), the moral indignity of it all (swoon)...  Only to find a majority of Americans still liked Slick Willie, that they backed him during the Republicans' failed effort to impeach, and that all of their outrage had been mocked or ignored.

The disconnect is still there, and it's gotten worse.  Per David Atkins at Washington Monthly:

The interesting question is why there is such a disconnect between the establishment pundit class and average American voters.  ...The professional political class lives in same socially rarefied air as America’s business...elites, culturally and economically separated by a widening gulf of inequality and disconnection that prevents them from grasping at an emotional, fundamental level the challenges faced by normal families...

The low-end journalists, the ones working local markets and on papers and magazines (the ones not yet dying out) may still earn within the real middle-class range (between 40k to 70k yearly) and may well remain connected to the real world.  However, once you get to the cable channel level, the nightly news level, the talking head level, those are people pulling down the seven-figure incomes and book deals of the upper classes.  Even the ones still "thinking" themselves as liberals/left-leaning are going to find themselves unable to fathom what a family living under $10 an hour has to do to survive.

The professional political class tends to believe that there is a mythical American “centrist/moderate” voter who loves John McCain and Joe Lieberman because they are serious, respectable moderates who “get things done...”

Note: we don't.

...The fact that the centrist voter is largely a myth doesn’t dawn on them, because they spend more time misreading poll results than they do actually talking to average voters. (Hint: lumping progressive and conservative voters who call themselves “independent” together into a single voting bloc and then marveling at their seemingly moderate collective policy choices isn’t terribly smart statistical analysis.) In a Washington DC where John McCain is a permanent fixture of the talk show circuit, McCain is the “maverick” and bellwether of serious opinion. In the real world, John McCain is just another extremist Republican to Democrats, and a despised Establishmentarian to the Republican base.

The media elites don't grok that McCain might not get all the fans agiggling because they meet with him so often and interact with his circle of friends to where they are blind to how others outside that circle would view him.  Epistemic closure at its simplest.

And by the by, moderate voters DO exist, we just don't sit there going Ooh and Ahh at everything you all say on the cable shows and Sunday morning gush-fests.

In the elite pundit world, voters are fairly happy with American society generally but unhappy with Washington specifically because of an “extremist” environment where no one cooperates to pass respectable centrist legislation. But in the real world, voters understand that the middle class is coming apart at the seams—which leads more knowledgeable left-leaning voters to support economic populist approaches to reduce inequality and hold corporations accountable, and that leads less educated, more racist and reactionary conservative voters to try to restrict immigration from allowing others to take “their” jobs...

To the media elites, those views both Left and Right are considered 'extremes' mostly because they can't see themselves being on the wrong side of income inequality (it's not their fault they're rich, after all) that's driving those views in the first place.  It's far easier to sit in their hermetically-sealed studios sharing coffee and jokes with "experts" like themselves and joke that it's all "Washington's fault" without realizing their part of that Washington culture - hi, Morning Joe! - making it a mess.

Easier for them to sit on the sidelines wondering where all the good times under Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill went than it is to empathize with the growing evidence that the United States has fallen apart and needs serious reforms and fixes - to our tax codes, to our highway budgets, to our immigration system, to our drug war and incarceration policies, to our racial conflicts and growing body count - that just can't be bothered with because they would involve messy disagreements among their own.

I said it before: it's not that we need term limits on our elected leaders, we need term limits on the Talking Heads dominating the cable news shows.  We need to slap some journalistic sense - and journalistic ethical standards - into these vapid chatterers, and remind them there's a real world outside the Green Rooms.

In Brief: No, Democrats Have NOT Gone Too Far Left (NSFW)

I'm not going to link directly to Peter Wehrer's article because I don't want to give him 7 more hits of traffic from my readers, but I will link to the articles written to refute his contention that the modern Democratic Party has gone too far Left.

One chart involving the US House (which is reflective of the partisan shifting in the Senate):

The Republicans have dramatically shifted more conservative than the Democrats shifting more liberal.

So in short: the Democrats have not gone too far Left.  The Republicans have gone too far Asshole.

A Winter Grayer Than Before

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said:
 "For hate is strong,
 And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
- "Christmas Bells," Longfellow

Thing about Christmastime, of December and the coming of winter.  It's a season of falling into the Gray Mood.  They call it the Winter Blues but it's really all Gray: the sky is gray, the ground is dead, the people are dour and burdened while the pressure builds to be festive and light-ful.

This year feels grayer than before.

Part of it is due to witnessing yet another disastrous midterm election.  Getting stuck in a state full of partisan morans voting that damn MEDICARE FRAUD back into the governor's office.  Banging my head against the desktop as voter turnout dropped to its lowest level since World War II.

Part of it is watching any semblance of justice in my own nation - land of the free and home of the brave - get flushed down a toilet as violent cops get let off for shooting unarmed teens and using illegal choke holds on guys whose only crime was not submitting to another round of public humiliation.

Part of it is realizing that the current political and economic landscape is about to get darker and nastier.  There's been buzz about a shutdown over Obama's attempts to reform immigration policy via his executive order powers.  There's concerns of a shutdown if there's a fight over a budget proposal that's top-heavy with corporate tax cuts and public sector spending cuts.

There's the growing realization that no matter the injustice of it, the insanity of it, the criminality of it... the Republicans will not rule even if they have the political power, they will ruin all.  They will twist the laws of the states they control to make it harder to vote, harder to complain, harder to stop them commit acts of graft and corruption.  Why listen to the critics or even the experts when there's no accountability for the sins they commit?

It's gray outside right now.  It's going to get darker, and I worry we won't see the sunshine any time soon.

The Angry Moderate Blues

I know it's a fault of myself when I sit here and look at the world and think "what the hell is everyone else thinking when they can't see what I'm seeing?"  I know people will have their own life experiences informing them of what choices to take.  I know people will have their own opinions.

Still.  WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, VOTERS?!

So here I am, fuming at an electorate that damages itself by voting for partisan Far Right hacks, suffering yet another bout of Angry Moderate Blues.

Yeah, Moderates can get angry... We certainly feel the blues.

--

I get the occasional troll on this blog - rare, considering the few comments I ever get - and I got a couple of them during my post of the Sample Ballot for the Florida midterms:

Wow - you are exactly what is wrong with America today. An ideologue that appears to have no clue about what made America great - diversity. Clearly you hate the Republicans more than you love America. Too bad. As an independent thinker, I prefer to vote based on substance not on ideology. Unfortunately neither party has many options when it comes to people of integrity, which is what many of us really want.

Getting called an ideologue is a new insult, but getting accused of not knowing about diversity is a twist. Considering I've posted my support for gay marriage, the free and open practice of all religions, my horror at seeing Blacks and Hispanics and Women getting treated like shit by the authorities and the overlords... Best I can say is that the guy posting that never read the whole of my blog, and thus didn't realize I am all about the diversity. Also, that I *do* love America: he must have missed the posts I add of the 4th of July, the celebration of Gettysburg and Woodstock, the occasional cultural milestone of Americana.  He's the one without a clue (psst, bro: next time READ THE BLOG BEFORE YOU INSULT THE BLOGGER)...

The next one was pretty straightforward:

I'm voting Republican straight ticket you useless liberal.

That's been the standard insult I get from the trolls.  You don't see most of them posting because I do have an administrative setting to filter all Comments.  Not for pure censorship, mind: It's because for a few years I was getting hit with Chinese Spam.  I'm not kidding.  The Chinese were spamming me, and I was like dudes I can't read Mandarin I can't tell what it is you want me to buy, stop it.  Anyway, I have the filter so I see a couple of Comments once in awhile in my Inbox and check them out.  Most of them are Anonymous, which tells me all I need to know about how cowardly they are, and they're pretty much calling me a libtard/librul/marxist/socialist of some kind.  I don't post those because 1) they don't contribute to the debate and 2) Anonymous posters are cowards.  I posted those two above because at least they put a name to the insult.

It's not that I'm bothered by the insults: Hell, I survived Tarpon Springs Middle School.  I've heard worse.  What bothers me is how wrong they get it by insulting me by something I'm not: Liberal.

For one thing, it's not an insult.  It's no more insulting than calling someone Conservative (if you try to insult me as a Conservative I'm going to look at you funny and give you the same retort).  The second thing, I've always considered myself a Moderate:

...Moderates support competency. We support things THAT WORK. If it doesn't work (example: THE WHOLE BUSH ADMINISTRATION) we don't support it. So there... Moderates recognize not so much the NEED for bipartisanship (or compromise) for the SAKE of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship and compromise between opposing factions are welcome when the end result will be something THAT WORKS...

If I look and act like I'm a Liberal, I'm really not. I'm looking and acting like someone who hates the Republican Party, by extension the whole of Conservative, Far Right ideology that has consumed that entire party.

And I hate the Republican Party because I used to be a member:

Actually I'm former Republican and I prefer to consider myself a moderate. I'm one of those dreaded RINOs you and yours drove out of the party. My hatred for the GOP is more despair at how broken and dogmatic it has become.

Calling me a liberal just shows how out of tune and extremist you've become, 'cause everything in opposition to you can only be a "socialist" or a "marxist" or a "liberal". All complexity of issues boiled down to just the hate.

Well, now you know why my ranting here on the blog is so one-sided against Republicans: because I came from there, it's all you had to teach me and I learned it from you. The only difference is I hope my hate for you will protect the rest of the nation and the world from your ruin.

When I first registered to vote I was a Republican.  I came from a Republican household - I've mentioned that more than once, especially about how old-school my dad is about Nixon - and so grew up in an environs of respecting such conservative principles as skepticism, desire for limited government, acceptance of liberal capitalism, and an overall avoidance to any aggressive radical change.

But by 1992 I noticed the party getting meaner and darker.  Not just a response to the rise of Bill Clinton as a political entity but just to nearly every issue.  Social conservatism went from being about compassion and charity and more about ostracism and pushing Christianity as a political force rather than a social foundation.  Economic conservatism went from respect for regulatory protections of the Eisenhower era to mass deregulation and unbridled laissez-faire.  Political conservatism went from diversity of opinions to adherence to dogma.  All of it wrapped into one big package of Fear-Mongering against the Other.

The key moment was Pat Buchanan's speech to the 1992 Convention.  Railing about a "culture war" and that "Clinton and Clinton" - fueling the Far Right fear that Hillary was going to be a Co-President of feminist intent - were going to destroy "God's America," Buchanan created a political identity of Republicans being hard-Right ideologues.

That moment - and the end of Bush the Elder's one-term tenure - began the purity purge against RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) as the extremists began targeting Moderate Republicans to push out and replace with more extreme, more Far Right candidates.

There were efforts to try and stave off the Club for Greed types that backed the purge, such as Main Street Republicans, but by today those moderate groups within the GOP are minorities - 46 Representatives out of 220-plus House Republicans, just 3 Senators out of 52 - within the ranks.  The purity purge by now has pretty much claimed full control of the Republican Party.

I did what I could to stay Moderate within the ranks meself.  I wasn't happy with the party's growing enthusiasms for the death penalty, massive deregulation in spite of historical evidence that deregulation was reckless, a pursuit not for small government but NO government, voter suppression efforts (yes even in the mid-1990s they were pulling that shit), and an eagerness by the leadership to pursue fiscal corruption that would make the Gilded Age look reformist by comparison.  While the Democrats weren't angels either, I loathed what the Republicans were revealing themselves to be.  I wasn't thrilled either by how the Republicans were crafting some fantasy-world dogma revolving around idol worship of Reagan and demonization of non-believers.

By about 2000, when Bush the Lesser became the candidate of choice (and despite his "compassionate conservative" platform he was the candidate of the purist ideologues) I pretty much gave up.  The disaster of the 2000 election results - and watching Republicans riot and get away with it in the Dade County elections office - sealed the deal.  I switched my party affiliation to No Party (I briefly flirted with being a Modern Whig back in 2009, maybe 2010, but that went nowhere).

The thing about becoming NPA (No Party Affiliate).  I still can't bring myself to make a full switch to becoming a Democrat.  It's not that I don't fully support Democrats - I have to, because they're the only actual alternative to the Republicans - it's that having been burned by one party I'm not keen on getting suckered into another.

What you see here on the blog when I rail about Republicans - when I cry all "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN" - this is an act of an Apostate.  Word for the day, kids: Apostasy is the renunciation or denial of a religious (and nowadays political) group that the denier once joined.  It's at the point where anything the Republicans are for - a horrifying Far Right conservatism that is more radical and destructive than actual anarchy - is something I would strongly argue against because I dread the party's true intent (usually having to do with ripping off taxpayers and blaming others for the impending disasters).

I'm at heart still a Moderate.  I don't want Small Government (or the No Government of the Tea Partier mindset), nor do I want Big Government: I want Effective government, one responsive enough to ensure people's rights and safety, yet streamlined without bureaucratic knots.  I want fair taxation (if that means bumping up the rates on the billionaires 2-3 percent and the economic models prove its effectiveness, so be it) based on the burden, not the rate.  I want deficit reduction but not at the expense of massive spending cuts that would harm families and children.  I want government to stimulate the private sector into genuine job growth and wage increases while ensuring that the market doesn't overreact to the costs of such moves.  I believe in Jesus but I don't want to shove Christ into our public schools, nor do I want Creationism - a foolish attempt to make the Bible literal fact rather than spiritual truth - overwhelming our sciences.  I don't buy the War on Christmas because there's still 300 million people in America who are not being forced at swordpoint to celebrate Saturnalia.  I know we need a strong military but I hate the wasteful spending (we bought a fleet of airplanes for billions and pretty much turned those planes into cheap scrap metal!).  I respect our need to forge strong alliances with foreign nations, but we don't need to bomb everybody into submission.

If that stuff makes me "liberal" then you've got a problem with your dictionary, 'cause I'm still Moderate.

I'm just an Angry Moderate.  Which isn't a contradiction in terms.

Note: Rude Pundit pretty much explains why the 2014 midterms went the way it did.  Part of it tribal BS, part of it ignorance.  All of it self-destructive.

We are as a nation voting not for the right reasons.