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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumDeluded Republican Reformers - by Michael Tomasky
Deluded Republican Reformersby Michael Tomasky Feb 23, 2013 4:45 AM EST
Conservative pundits ideas about fixing the GOP are totally meaningless, says Michael Tomasky, until they deal with the problem of their partys rage-driven fanaticism.
Conservative pundits and intellectuals have spent the past week or twoever since the publication in Commentary magazine of Peter Wehner and Michael Gersons How to Save the Republican Partytalking about, well, how to save the Republican Party. They have lots of ideassome good, some not so good, most very sober-minded policy prescriptions. I wrote a short blog post about this on Thursday. But then I reflected: This topic needs a longer treatment. The party they purport to support and care about has been engaged in burning down the house of American politics for three or four years now, and they are saying nothing about it; and until they say something about it, everything else they say is close to meaningless.
As Ive written many times, the conventional view of whats wrong with the GOP gets at only a portion of the truth. When The New York Times or Politico does such a story, the story inevitably focuses on policy positions. Immigration. Same-sex marriage. Climate change. Tinker with these positions, several sages are quoted as saying, and the GOP will be back in the game.
God knows, policy positions are a problem. But they are not the problem. The problem is that the party is fanaticala machine of rage, hate, and resentment. People are free to scoff and pretend it isnt so, but I dont think honest people can deny that weve never seen anything like this in the modern history of our country. Theres a symbiosis of malevolence between the extreme parts of the GOP base and Washington lawmakers, and it is destroying the Republican Party. Thats fine with me, although I am constantly mystified as to why its all right with the people Im talking about. But its also destroying the country and our democratic institutions and processes, which is not fine with me.
The party can change all the positions it wants, but until people stand up and yell Stop! to this fanaticism, it wont mean anything. In fact, the problems feed into each other, because the idea that todays Republican Party can change its stripes on same-sex marriage or immigration is absurd, and it is absurd precisely because of the rage and fanaticism Im talking about, much of which is directed at brown people and gay people. Such a party cannot change its stripes on these issues until the mindset and world view are changed.
-snip-
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/23/deluded-republican-reformers.html
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Deluded Republican Reformers - by Michael Tomasky (Original Post)
DonViejo
Feb 2013
OP
Blue4Texas
(437 posts)1. Fear of caring :)
Cha
(297,246 posts)2. First and foremost the gop is a Big Lie Machine.
dmosh42
(2,217 posts)3. They 'reaped what they sowed'. They wanted the wackos, and now they run the show!