The Decline and Fall of the Republican Party

After successfully engineering a massive electoral victory in 1994, the Republican Party’s slide has been nearly as spectacular and quite predictable. By building a massive internally inconsistent boil of special interests, the GOP was able to divide Americans into neat little slices to whom they pandered. By building a massive money machine based around those interests, virtually taking over all of the lobby shops in the “K-Street Project”, they ensured a firehose stream of cash that ultimately led to massive money abuses.

By posing whenever possible as “more patriotic”, “more responsible”, “more moral” and “more religious”, they also set themselves up for a fall. Power corrupts, and they had a lot of power – and a lot of the opportunity to claim success or to be tarred with their failures. Between the financial and bribery scandals, the complete lack of morality in their behavior, their complete disrespect for the evangelicals they claimed to be serving, their willingness to sell out our nation’s troops on every possible level from equipment to medical care. The Republicans spent so much time telling their special interest groups that they were “special” that they ignored that most Americans are normal folks who don’t enjoy year after year of so-called “culture wars” and other polarizing malarkey that demonizes people for not measuring up to a range of imaginary lines.

Is it any mystery that moderate Republicans are jumping ship from such a polarizing party? Kansas may well turn into a “blue state” this year – several tough races are being fought there by former Republicans who cannot stand to see the GOP-sponsored partisanship continue to paralyze our society. Rove and those who have followed the White House in lock-step harmony have brought our nation to a point where everything is supposedly about politics – and in the process they’ve forgotten what it is to simply be citizens, what it is to be Americans.

Check out this article:

[quote][T]here is increasing anxiety among Republicans about whether new efforts to frame the party’s message can be effective in turning a tide that seems to be running powerfully against them as a result of the Iraq war and the Mark Foley page scandal.

For months, Republican leaders have sought to reassure candidates and activists with a succession of strategies. These included efforts to transcend the national environment by focusing House and Senate races on local issues as well as high-profile speeches by Bush casting Iraq as just one theater in a larger war against terrorists. But none of these approaches has succeeded over a sustained time in reversing polls showing deep voter unrest and willingness to punish Republicans for the performance of Washington.

The mood among most GOP strategists – with the exception of Rove and a few others – is decidedly downbeat heading into the final 18 days. They see poll after poll showing a growing number of GOP House incumbents in serious danger, including many who just weeks ago were considered relatively safe for reelection. The list of most-imperiled incumbents now includes Reps. Heather A. Wilson (N.M.) and Curt Weldon (Pa.), a top GOP strategist said.

By this reckoning, roughly a dozen GOP-controlled House seats are “gone, no ifs, ands or buts about it,” said the strategist, who discussed internal party deliberations on the condition of anonymity.

A number of GOP operatives said privately yesterday that they now see minimum losses of perhaps 18 seats, with 25 to 30 a more likely outcome. Democrats need 15 to take control of the House.[/quote]

I’m sure the GOP will replace itself with something equally…uhm…equal.

But could it be better? Just thinking about it – there was a time when guys like Bob Dole and Bill Clinton could actually run against each other and still like each other. I know that the GOP got a lot of mileage under Rove in the short term by dividing up Americans, but now that folks are sick of it don’t you think there’s now an opportunity for people to actually cooperate a bit in government?

More news in on the disintegration of the GOP, as they start to fight each other like desperate, starving dogs:

[quote]Tax-cutters are calling evangelicals bullies. Christian conservatives say Republicans in Congress have let them down. Hawks say President Bush is bungling the war in Iraq. And many conservatives blame Representative Mark Foley’s sexual messages to teenage pages.
With polls showing Republican control of Congress in jeopardy, conservative leaders are pointing fingers at one other in an increasingly testy circle of blame for potential Republican losses this fall.

“It is one of those rare defeats that will have many fathers,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, expressing the gloomy view of many conservatives about the outcome on Election Day. “And they will all be somebody else.”


In the case of the Republican Party this year, the skirmish among conservatives over what is going wrong has begun unusually early and turned unusually personal.

But almost regardless of the outcome on Nov. 7, many conservatives express frustration that the party has lost its ideological focus. And after six years of nearly continuous control over the White House and Congress, conservatives are having a hard time finding anyone but one another to blame.

“It is pre-criminations,” said Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, the conservative magazine. “If a party looks like it is going to take a real pounding, this sort of debate is healthy. What is unusual is that it is happening beforehand.”[/quote]

This thread is a bit too frightening for most of the Bushbots. Nobody going to argue that the GOP will emerge victorious? Nobody going to say that the GOP is "cleaning its own house? No?

It looks like all the Republicans who are in jeopardy are moderates, eg. Lincoln Chaffee in RI. So it will definitely be a housecleaning of sorts, regardless of who has control of the house and senate in January… those Republicans closest to the base will survive.

I’m making no predictions. I’ve been burned by doing so before. Anything could happen between now and the election. (BTW, I just cast my vote - straight Dem ticket as always.)

If the Dems win Congress, there will be much rejoicing in my household, believe you me. We will finally have checks and balances, and it will be a great humiliation for the GOP - humiliation they richly deserve. I will know that the People are fed up with the dirty tricks, propaganda and lies of the right.

If the GOP wins, I’ll look forward to watching the GOP destroy itself with continued lying, corruption, bigotry and incompetence, with increasingly desperate and fantastical finger-pointing and conspiracy theorizing a la Coulter, Hannity and Limbaugh.

Evil always destroys itself in the end.

Salvatore Armani – Actually there are some big Republican guns who are in trouble. Santorum in Pennsylvania is running way behind, Mike DeWine in Ohio, etc. Across the country there are House candidates who got too close to Abramoff or are getting beaten about for their lockstep voting. A lot of GOP strongholds are now open races – check out Kleeb in Nebraska for an interesting race, Wulsin in Ohio has a good chance of taking Schmidt’s seat.

I think that WE Republicans would win in November IF all the Republican leadership would come out with a major mea culpa with the promise that NO new spending will be enacted and that the leadership will start hacking away at spending. THAT was why and how we won in 1994 and the Bush administration (and here I will agree with MFGR) has been spending money like a drunken whore-addicted, sex-deprived sailor. ENOUGH.

I will not however criticize it for its policies in Iraq, Afghanistan or with regard to interrogation. This has been highly successful and we have had no new terrorist attacks on America directly.

You think that this election is about the spending? Woah… you’d better lay off the crack pipe. Sure they’ve been irresponsible in spending, but there’s a lot more afoot. There’s something for everybody! Libertarians angry about having their innards and phone bills prodded, grandmas and grandpas pissed about the GOP efforts to screw with Social Security, the evangelicals waking up to the fact that the Republican leadership considers their faith a joke, concerned Americans worried about the inability to respond capably to Katrina (4 years after 9-11, FEMA was being run by an Arabian horse-show guy?), as well as the very hard realization for many Americans that the Bush administration had lied to get us into Iraq. You don’t think Abramoff and the downfalls of Scanlon, Safavian, Cunningham, Ney, Delay and so many others hasn’t had an impact? Take your pick. Hastert’s multi-year protection of Foley’s child-chasing ways are only one symptom of a giant roiling infected mess hardly covered by a one-micron layer of surface tension.

Iraq is so successful? Give it 2 years and it will be part of Greater Ira, the petro-dollar-only caliphate that broadcasts the Ayatollah Khomeini’s greatest hits re-sung and re-mastered by Cat Stevens. Meanwhile a full third of Afghanistan is Taliban territory because Dummy thought we could fight “war on the cheap”. Thanks, neocons! We had a whole bunch of plans for how to handle the aftermath of a successful invasion of Iraq, but the neocons didn’t want to deal with them because they were drawn up by the terrible State Department. In a double slam to Powell, the whole “war on the cheap” concept was a thumb in the eye to the “Powell Doctrine”, the basic truth of which has been now established by the failures suffered in both wars. Are we going to “stay the course”? Bush now doesn’t like that phrase somehow…

As to whether our interrogation methods are successful, we only have the word of a serial liar like Bush that torture is doing a good job. Professional interrogators (as opposed to our Abu Ghraib-ish ones) find that torture just gets prisoners to tell you what they think you want to hear. Meanwhile, it seems that senior Republican officials are quite adept at giving away lots of information about our key CIA intelligence officers … the sort who are experts in dealing with weapons proliferation issues. Thanks to Libby, Armitage and Rove making Plame part of their talking points, any sources who used to met with Plame regularly have dried up and officers who used the same cover companies have now been compromised.

As to the lack of terrorist attacks, we’ve been very lucky so far given that our port security sucks (with port-security money going to landlocked townships in Montana, I can imagine how…) and our airports are far from secure. Perhaps if Bush, Rice and the others hadn’t been so determined to take long vacations in Crawford and completely disregard the very detailed anti-terror plans left to them by the Clinton administration we could’ve done something about 9-11 before it happened. Asleep at the wheel…

Does that mean Bush is the worst U.S. president ever because on his watch the worst direct terrorist attack on the U.S. happened? Weren’t you pro Bush some time ago? You think all the others were better just because nothing like 9/11 happend during their terms?

Games:

What are you talking about? Yes, the worst terrorist incident happened while Bush was in office but… I do not see where you are going. Are you saying it is because of Bush? his fault? the team he put in place did not see things? etc.? I disagree.

Anyway, I have ALWAYS had a problem with Bush and Big Government and the big spending increases.

As to MFGR, calling someone else a serial liar. That truly gives me cause to smile… haha One would think that this is something that would have made you lie down in admiration for the man or should I say Man?

Well, you claimed he has done such a splendid job and all because there has been “no major, direct terrorist attack on the U.S. since 9/11”. Kind of as if this was Bush’s accomplishment rather than luck (or maybe Al Qaida not being all that powerful like this left wing pamphlet here claims?).

If that is the case, does that in turn also mean 9/11 was Bush’s fault rather than mere bad luck?

Or is it just when nothing bad happens, then you construct it is all Bush’s accomplishment … when something goes wrong though, then it is just plain bad luck and his administration not to blame?

Btw - any plan already how to fight your Great Leap Forward in the Middle East without spending big money? Just asking.

(Edit: I retract that question. I completely forgot socialists focus on grand vision first, feasibity second … if that).

It is truly confusing to me how I can be a socialist now after being an imperialist oh like even a few minutes ago while at the same time not caring enough to get involved in other people’s problems oh like seconds before that. I guess I must truly be some sort of chameleon, eh?

Have a great weekend. Off.

Fred

Spot on. As long as it helps you pose as a conservative to fan your vanity within your personal left-right paradigm I am convinced you will say anything. No doubt about that ever. Pretty much like the average 68er. “Socialist pauper” to “smash the establishment” to “be the establishment” to “corrupt fat cat” … just ask your avatar, right? :wink:

Anyhow - so what is the latest socialist plan for “bring prosperity to the Middle East and all, but it will cost no one anything”. I am still curious to hear details. Sorceror’s Stone again, same sollution you suggested to the question from where to summon democracy in the Middle East? Abra-cadabra or was it simsalabim (forgot)?

That’s just your privately endorsed sollution to Iraq though, right? Not official GOP policy for the next election campaign, correct? I admit, it would be mighty popular: get all, pay none. I mean, for fools that is.

Anyhow … about the “Rise & Decline” of the GOP one thing which rings awfully familiar is what pushed back the left since 80s:

[quote]The Infantilization Process

With his ponderous heaving and groaning about thesis and antithesis, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel did no more than express a commonplace observation in the maximum number of words: just when a movement – be it political, intellectual, artistic, or religious – is at the stage of its greatest worldly success, the seeds of decay are already germinating. The decay springs from having no serious opposition, which in turn leads to complacency, stagnation, and a streak of self-righteousness. When opposition is heretical by definition, there is no need for rigorous intellectual justification of one’s own viewpoint.

Liberalism demonstrated this tendency in the 1960s and '70s. As an (apparently) unchallengeable consensus, liberals degenerated into arrogant defenders of the status quo; opponents were dismissed (or demonized) as ignorant racist rednecks. As intellectual stagnation ensued, mainstream liberalism gradually splintered into political dead-ends: identity politics, the cult of victimization, and cultural nihilism.

As the Richard Hofstadters, Arthur Schlesingers, and Daniel Bells receded from defining liberalism, their place was taken by a bizarre coterie of crackpot feminists, cultural deconstructionists, guilt-mongers, and liberation theologists. By merely by asserting confidence and upholding the “normal,” Ronald Reagan was able to topple the liberal consensus.[/quote]

The rest of the article is just soso. Bit too much on the parody side of things for my taste (though I always wonder how the author got such a clear picture of Fred in spite of all).

But I always liked this concise little summary how the dead-ender segment of the left shot their political base in the knee … and suffered accordingly for that then since Reagan and up to this day.

IF the right will head the same way with its own dead-enders these days remains open yet though. Could as well be they adapt and cut off their loose cannons in due time.