BINGO - The Last Stand of the Modern GOP

[kpete]

The Last Stand of the Modern GOP
by BooMan
Sat Sep 29th, 2012 at 10:57:22 PM EST




Jonathan Chait wrote a nearly perfect piece back in February for New York Magazine. It was an attempt to explain the strategy (and a bit of the psychology underpinning the strategy) that the Republicans adopted in the wake of Barack Obama's 2008 victory. Why go for total obstruction? Why move to the right on immigration? Why nurture the most far right elements of the party? Why embark on a massive voter suppression plan? Chait covered it all, and I think he nailed it. At its simplest, they know that the America they once knew and dominated is slipping away. They know that the GOP, as it has existed since 1980, is going to have to adapt or die. But they decided they should roll the dice on one more chance at glory. If they could pin the economic downturn on the president and gin up enough racial and class resentment, they might be able to take back the House in 2010 and the Senate and White House in 2012. With the trifecta for at least two years, they could make their last stand and perhaps stall the coming progressive revolution for a decade or more. Here's a particularly good part of Chait's piece:

Last summer, Obama was again desperate to reach compromise, this time on legislation to reduce the budget deficit, which had come to dominate the political agenda and symbolize, in the eyes of Establishment opinion, Obama’s failure to fulfill his campaign goal of winning bipartisan cooperation. In extended closed-door negotiations, Obama offered Republicans hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts and a permanent extension of Bush-era tax rates in return for just $800 billion in higher revenue over a decade. This was less than half the new revenue proposed by the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission. Republicans spurned this deal, too.

Instead the party has bet everything on 2012, preferring a Hail Mary strategy to the slow march of legislative progress. That is the basis of the House Republicans’ otherwise inexplicable choice to vote last spring for a sweeping budget plan that would lock in low taxes, slash spending, and transform Medicare into ­private vouchers—none of which was popular with voters. Majority parties are known to hold unpopular votes occasionally, but holding an ­unpopular vote that Republicans knew full well stood zero chance of enactment (with Obama casting a certain veto) broke new ground in the realm of foolhardiness.

The way to make sense of that foolhardiness is that the party has decided to bet everything on its one “last chance.” Not the last chance for the Republican Party to win power—there will be many of those, and over time it will surely learn to compete for nonwhite voters—but its last chance to exercise power in its current form, as a party of anti-government fundamentalism powered by sublimated white Christian identity politics. (And the last chance to stop the policy steamroller of the new Democratic majority.)

That is a B-I-N-G-O, right there.

....................

the rest:
http://nymag.com/news/features/gop-primary-chait-2012-3/
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/9/29/225722/752

[central scrutinizer]

1. modern GOP is an oxymoron

or should that be oxymoran?

[starroute]

2. There's more to it than that -- they want to create irreversible facts

Once mountaintops have been leveled, they can't be rebuilt.

Once government operations have been privatized, they can't readily be reclaimed or the institutional knowledge reconstructed.

Once public lands have been sold off, they can't be renationalized.

I think the GOP is aiming at control of all three branches of government for just long enough to allow their buddies to loot the nation for once and for all.

I'm not sure what they see as following that. Some may hope that once all the wealth of the nation is in their hands, the peons will have no choice but to suck up to them for crumbs. Others may just be intending to take the money and run.

But either way, wrecking and looting is at the heart of the operation. They've given up on winning hearts and minds, and all they know is how to destroy.

[magical thyme]

4. agreed on all points.

The 1%ers are planning on looting the nation. Harvesting corporations was just the practice and warm up for harvesting countries.

[villager]

3. Hopefully Obama won't try to offer such shitty compromises in a second term, either

He will, one hopes, be the older/wiser Obama now...

[magical thyme]

5. My hope as well. I won't be celebrating this inauguration so much as

breathing a sigh of relief. And immediately getting down to the real work of pushing Obama hard the way we need him to go.

We need a sweeping election to give Obama not only a mandate but a congress with a mandate as well.

[RickFromMN]

6. I'm not sure I agree. The game has a ways to go after any "Hail Mary" pass.

As long as the right wing can equate patriotism with being right wing, with guns and bibles, with the belief they made it themselves without the help of the government or society, they can get enough senators to filibuster needed job bills and needed reforms.

Apathetic people, when things get bad enough, when apathetic people finally vote, will vote for the loudest candidates, not the best candidates. With Citizen's United and the group of rich people willing to fund right wing SuperPACs, the right wing will be the loudest.

People will go from feeling patriotic, waving their guns and bibles and tea bags, to feeling threatened. A threatened animal is a dangerous animal. I heard there were right wing militia groups, hopefully, so far being only weekend toy soldiers. When they finally, really feel threatened, they will do more than be toy soldiers.

All that is needed is a catalyst, a charismatic figure with a ruthless agenda. Hitler gained power, democratically, on a platform of nationalism, in the middle of a depression.

The right wing speaks of patriotism. Ruthless, charismatic, power-hungry leaders know how to turn patriotism into nationalism.

The Republican policies almost plunged us into a depression in 2008.

In case people haven't noticed, Congress passed and Obama signed what is called the financial cliff, which can (will!) plunge us into a deep recession, if not a depression.

We are not out of the financial woods yet, not by a long shot.

What is missing is the charismatic figure. Charismatic figures seem to like to write books. People know of any right wing leader who has written a book espousing patriotism lately?

Why can't we equate patriotism with helping others?

Why can't we equate patriotism with using the government to care for people when individuals and groups cannot?

Why can't we admit we had help getting where we are? We did not build it alone. We did not do it alone.