You can tell the sun is setting on a once-great political party when it starts issuing angry, demonizing mission statements that seem deliberately devised to alienate as many moderate voters as possible. When the most extreme and reactionary wing of a party asserts total control over its institutions and expenditures - which usually only happens when the party is in the opposition (internecine blood-feuds being unseemly and counterproductive to a governing administration) - it can usually be counted on to cakewalk itself to the very brink of electoral extinction before it can even begin its long slow dejected trudge back to political reality, and the viable center. At that point their enemies - that's to say, you and I - can sit back with our popcorn and enjoy, probably for several years to come, some gripping and extremely bloody political theater. It's happening to the Republican Party right this minute - and I just couldn't be happier.
It happened to the British Labour Party once, too, in the 1983 General Election (a time when the Democratic Party was suffering similar, albeit milder, pangs of self-doubt and mutual recrimination). Like the Republicans' recent ten-point "Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates" or purity test, the '83 Labour Manifesto threw sops and props to the most demented fever-dreams of the party's clapped-out left-wing ancien regime: withdrawal from the EEC, unilateral nuclear disarmament, and the re-nationalization of pretty much everything privatized by Margaret Thatcher since 1979. Labour eminence and wit Gerald Kaufman dubbed the manifesto "the longest suicide note in history." Labour lost its shirt, its drawers, its shit and, for a period, its mind.
A couple of years earlier, several senior Labour centrists formed a breakaway, middle-of-the-road party, The Social Democratic Party, whose modest successes ensured the left-wing majority vote was split for the next three elections. A mirror-image pattern is detectable among centrist Republicans (I know, I know, that phrase sounds so quaintly anachronistic...) now fleeing from the Right to the deserted middle-ground. Charles Johnson and Andrew Sullivan, Davids Frum and Brooks - all of whom possess the kind of elitist, Ivy League, East Coast Establishment smarts that so enrage the contentedly ignorant Palin-ites and the Beck-Limbaugh ditto-cracy - have been distancing themselves like crazy of late from the barking, biting beast that has metastasized on the right since Obama was elected. You can bet that plenty of nameless Republicans of a Reaganite bent are fleeing alongside them. Who can blame them? The GOP is now owned and operated by descendants of the kind of people who once joined the John Birch Society, the Liberty Lobby, or The Committee of Ten Million, and considered Eisenhower a commie stooge - folks whom cosmopolitan conservatives like William F. Buckley deemed too nutty to be admitted into polite company.
The GOP, on the other hand, is making deals with the renascent far right at every opportunity, in the vain hope of co-opting it into its steadily deflating "big tent" even as it slowly realizes that the beast's irrational, often medieval appetites can never be slaked. The first time you shake hands with these people you lose your wristwatch, the second time, a couple of fingers, third time, the whole arm...
The "Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates" is a document exactly characteristic of a party in decline, a desperate reiteration of the same old right-wing grudges and grievances - couched in sunlit terms of uplift but at its core bleakly negative - that drove the GOP into the ditch last November. Irrational adherence to policies demonstrably proven to be electorally catastrophic is a sure sign that the idiots are now firmly in charge. You know who would probably have failed this test? The pragmatic and shrewd Ronald Reagan to whom they offer never-ending hosannahs.
And the wags are right - there is a horrible, queasy similarity between the Resolution and those nauseating Daddy-Daughter virginity balls (the GOP being, of course, "the Daddy party") popular in your more credulous and deranged fundamentalist suburbs, those god-fearing burgs where abstinence-only sex-ed has caused teen-pregnancy and STD rates to skyrocket off the charts. I am completely in favor of equal opportunity teen abstinence, but when you're browbeating your own daughters into Saving Their Maidenhead For Daddy, you're already pretty far along the road to burkhas, bound feet, arranged marriages and virginity-testing by prospective fathers-in-law. Why not just go the whole hog and repeal women's suffrage altogether? Sooner or later the GOP's emergent resemblance to the Taliban - which also keeps lists of do's and don'ts and loyalty tests ever close at hand, and loathes women with every sinew of its being - will become plain to all.
I also can't help noticing that the resolution includes nothing - not a syllable - that would prevent sexual hypocrites like David Vitter, John Ensign, Mark Foley or Larry Craig from netting party funds come ballot-time. Surely somewhere in the middle there should be something saying, "I shall not troll for prostitutes like a common curb-crawler," "I shall hereinafter foreswear Congressional pages' bottoms," or "I shall not abase myself before the glory-holes of airport bathrooms." Nothing like that to be found, but naturally, there's the staunchest support for the Defense of Marriage Act. And all the handguns you can eat. You know, in case the British come a-knocking.
It's the GOP's own version of the longest suicide note in history. The party has locked itself in the garage, closed the automatic door and set the engine running. Say goodnight, Ronnie.
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There is only relative descent and temporary schism in a two-party-system. The appearance of one party is always determined by the shape of the other. Political success is when voters perceive your pile of crap as the smaller one.
If Democrats and President keep doing what they are doing now, which is standing in shock and awe, watching how two Senators and 40 nay-sayers dictate the course of the country, the perception of voters may change swiftly. If energy-, immigration-, and bank-reform go down the drain, as health care did, the change may even come quicker.
Democrats need to grow a pair, and the President needs to get the party in line. Nobody is going to depose him if he loses a fig, but everybody will if he keeps refusing to fight, and keeps appeasing the right. Nobody perceived the Torys and Maggy Thatcher as weak, when Labour took their time out.
I agree we need an opposition party, but we have not had that since the Democrats took control of the House and Senate. All we have, on the right, is a bunch of sniveling crybabies with no ideas.
Whatever else you may think about Obama, he has done one thing no-one else could do.
He has made the government of America front page news, web page news, and world wide news.
People are paying attention.
Is the GOP self destructing? Yes.
But so is the Democratic party by failing to express the views of their constituency and allowing lobbying and corporate influence to determine government policies.
If corporations are seen to control congress, there will indeed be massive upsets in congress next year. Because a lot more of the voters are likely to turn out, and alot of congressmen are going to be very surprised to find themselves replaced.
On both sides.
It's quite possible that for the first time, multiple parties might be elected, and the two party system will be a four, or eight, or twenty.
People are fed up with big tents. The far left can't stand the moderate left, the far right can't stand the moderate right, and no-one can stand the centrists, even though they represent the real majority.
2010 might just see America become a multi-party nation, instead of a two party one.
And about damn time. That's what the Founding Fathers intended until Madison decided to game the system and forced Jefferson into founding an opposition and established the two-party fiasco.
All that said, there's no way to know, and people predicting the way elections are going to go this far out are fools. The situation today is very volatile. Any number of events can change things on a dime either way, especially given the conditions noted above. One thing I am certain of. The Republicans just about wrecked the country, and it's amazing how the right has already "forgotten" that. If the Republicans regain power they may not have to complete the job: they will just prevent the Dems from trying to salvage it, and that will he that. If the Dems hang on, we have a chance but only a chance.
I might add that I believe the republicans do not take into account that there is a clear demographic of independents who, although are ready to criticize the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party, clearly despises the republicans for their "core" values/frailties/propoganda. This is a demographic that sarcastically cheers on the republican "purity" movement, fully knowing that it only alienates the far right and disenfranchises moderate conservatives. In some cases it moves moderate conservatives to either support Democratic Party initiatives or re-register as independents or switch parties altogether.
This anti-republican "silent" majority encourages insinuations that the likes of sarah palin and rush limbaugh are official mainstream leaders of the republican party.
The conservative movement that once was has become a parody of itself and keeps moderates an easy arms-length away from this fringe demographic.
The repugs are getting so bad, even if I had a good one that I might like to vote for, I wouldn't because they won't think for themselves and the common good seems to not be part of their understanding of their role in our society.
Thanks again.
a president mired in the 40's, a democrat senate about to lose 5-8 of its members if not more, a democrat house about to lose between 26-50 seats, a majority leader headed for a historic loss, and you are concerned about a GOP memo??? priceless!!!
the loony left never learns, they can never tell a perfect storm election from a political realignment because they are desperate for a progressive era that has never and will never come. obama didn't win because of a liberal realignment, he won the same way jimmy carter did, a perfect storm that combined anger at the incumbent party and a new, fresh faced candidate with a lot of gimmicks. after 4 short years, the people of this country will right themselves once again, and send obama to join jimmy carter on the scrap heap of history.
what's even funnier is given the pathetic state of the labour party today that any sane person would hold them up as a good example for anything. gordon brown and his party may be the worst in british history, stains on a once great country soon to be wiped away by david cameron.
the planet hasn't warmed since 2000, clinton's final year
obama can order a withdraw tomorrow, but chose not to
meanwhile bush created a deficit, obama doubled it
bush grew the debt, obama has exploded it
bush had 7% unemployment at his worst, obama is over 10%
the blame bush game has run it's course, PPP's new poll showing Obama leading Bush only 50-44 shows that the left's strawman arguments will no longer work. all that's left is their record of failure.
Is this not an untenable situation? While I agree that the Republican Party is marginalizing itself, could this situation just as easily resolve itself in the destruction of the Left as of the Right? Could the current breed of Conservatism emerge after this period as the only cohesive political ideology with a political party to represent it?
Or am I just worrying too much?
Already the moderate/conservative Democrats are working with the progressives to get something done on health care, climate change etc. Those are the two parties our country now has. The GOP has been not been relevant for some time now.
the democrats with try to demonize the right as much as possible, following the alinsky strategy step by step, but the crushing debt and deficits followed by inflation created by democrats will wipe their centrist members out coast to coast. from dodd, to lincoln, to reid, the democrats are collapsing, and soon all that will be left will be dicky durbin and his band of radicals! hey at least you'll still have al franken lol.
They still control the message and frame the debate. Until these hosts are held accountable for lying, inciting hatred and fear of the President and omitting pertinent facts when reporting news we are in jeopardy of losing our Democracy. Palin 2012 should fringten us all.
Do me a favor. When you listen to Rush, Beck Hannity etc the same 4 special interst groups are protected by them
1. Wall St.
2. Healthcare Industry
3. Big oil
4. Military industrial complex
But they do it in a way that sounds patriotic and repeat it over and over. It is a simple but effective recipe first used by Joseph Goebells.