The GOP's last chance: Become Democrats

[xochi]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/11/11/republicans/

With all trends running against them, Republicans' only hope is to reinvent themselves as pragmatists. That, or nominate Sarah Palin and go out in a blaze of glory.

By Gary Kamiya

Nov. 11, 2008 | Surveying the wreckage after American voters gave their party the bum's rush, Republican thinkers have pondered what went wrong, searched their souls -- and decided that the way to regain power is to move further to the right.

In postmortem conferences and symposiums, in right-wing journals and Web sites, on Fox News, the overwhelming consensus among Republican analysts is that the only thing wrong with conservatism is that it isn't conservative enough. In a morning-after National Review symposium titled "How the GOP Got Here," L. Brent Bozell wrote, "The liberal wing of the GOP has caused the collapse of the Republican Party." Richard Viguerie said, "Republicans will make a comeback only after they return to their conservative roots." Other contributors echoed these sentiments. If only McCain had attacked Obama on red-meat issues like immigration or abortion or cloning. If only Bush had not betrayed Reagan's legacy by expanding Medicare. If only conservatives had let Sarah Palin be Sarah Palin.

Pat Buchanan argued on the right-wing site Townhall that McCain lost because he was too deferential to Beltway decorum and refused to take the culture-war gloves off. Noting that McCain refused to raise the Rev. Wright issue and didn't hit Obama on Bill Ayers as hard as he could, Buchanan wrote disapprovingly, "Lee Atwater would not have been so ambivalent."

Predictably taking the hardest line were the braying tribunes of the right-wing plebs, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. The McCain-detesting Coulter wrote, "The only good thing about McCain is that he gave us a genuine conservative, Sarah Palin. He's like one of those insects that lives just long enough to reproduce so that the species can survive. That's why a lot of us are referring to Sarah as 'The One' these days. Like Sarah Connor in 'The Terminator,' Sarah Palin is destined to give birth to a new movement."

Limbaugh managed to refrain from comparing McCain to an insect, but he joined Coulter in anointing Palin the future queen of the Republican Party. Noting that a Rasmussen poll showed that 69 percent of GOP voters love Palin, Limbaugh sneered, "So all of you wizards of smart on our side, all of you intellectualoids who think that Palin was a drag, the party loves Sarah Palin. The vast majority of conservative Republicans love Sarah Palin. Twenty percent of Republicans who say she hurt the ticket, you are probably the ones that need to go and walk and join across the aisle with the others that you find so much more palatable because they are able to communicate and they are writers and they are intellectual ... The party loves her."

It's hardly surprising that buffoonish entertainers like Coulter and Limbaugh are sticking to their guns: Their livelihood depends on catering to the rabid GOP base. But you'd think that the right's cooler heads would realize that something has gone terribly wrong with a party and a movement that can seriously consider nominating Sarah Palin for president.

The right's love affair with the feckless Palin indicates it has learned nothing from the Bush and McCain debacles. Bush's presidency was a decisive refutation of the idea that Republicans can win by playing only to true believers. And McCain's fateful decision to embrace the Bush-Rove play-to-the-base strategy cost him any chance he had at winning the election.

Right-wing ideologues are suffering from massive cognitive dissonance (not to mention a healthy helping of denial). They can't grasp why their party imploded because the vast majority of them always supported Bush and his policies and still do. A few conservative critics have blasted him for lacking fiscal discipline, but most right-wing pundits liked Bush's policies just fine -- until the public turned on him and on McCain.

Some conservatives, like the National Review's Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru, have tepidly argued that the GOP must reach out to the middle class. But they don't explain exactly how it's supposed to do this without abandoning its core ideology. McCain made a classic Republican appeal to the "aspirational" middle class by attacking tax increases on the richest Americans, and he promoted a free-market approach to healthcare. But Americans roundly rejected both ideas. Lowry and Ponnuru blame McCain for being a bad salesman, but the real problem is the product.

The painful truth for conservatives is that the dogs aren't eating their dog food -- and every national trend indicates that they will never eat it again. Which means the GOP faces a wrenching choice: remain true to its increasingly irrelevant and rejected ideology and fade into political insignificance, or remake itself as essentially a more moderate version of the Democratic Party.

more at: http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/11/11/republicans/index.html

[BR_Parkway]

1. Please, remain true - hoist up Sarah as your icon, do as you've done

for decades now - cry that you are the persecuted party of personal responsibility while never actually taking any. Look around you for things to blame - there are plenty to keep you from blaming yourselves and learning from it. Blame me, I offer myself gladly for you to use that way.

Because you and your ideas will never rise up again without another crushing defeat. The Trojan horse only worked the first time - now that the people have had a chance to see inside your hollow belly, we won't believe you again.

[tanyev]

2. "Sarah Palin is destined to give birth to a new movement"

Oh, that's why I'm supposed to be intimidated by her fertility. It all makes sense now.

[acmavm]

6. Yeah, that just jumped out from the screen and smacked me in the face

too.

These people, do you really think that they think Palin is presidential material. Now, I know you're gonna say 'they thought bush** was'. Well, as bad as bush** is, she makes him look like a Pulitzer and Nobel winner all rolled up into one beady-eyed little package.

[vademocrat]

3. Sure Rush - send the dems 20% of the gop - please -

"Twenty percent of Republicans who say she hurt the ticket, you are probably the ones that need to go and walk and join across the aisle with the others that you find so much more palatable because they are able to communicate and they are writers and they are intellectual..."

Chase them on over to the party with the big tent!

[Best_man23]

4. What will it take?

I just knew this would be their reaction, move further to the right.

Could Dems get 300+ seats in the Congress, or a veto-proof majority in the Senate? Very possible.

[xochi]

5. I think you mean filibuster proof majority in the Senate. n/t

[bulloney]

7. But you'd think that the right's cooler heads would realize that something has gone terribly wrong

with a party and a movement that can seriously consider nominating Sarah Palin for president.

The key phrase is "cooler heads." People of Limbaugh's and Coulter's ilk can never admit they've been wrong. Let's hope they continue with their antiquated ideology and drive their careers off the cliff and become irrelevant.

For the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone can hitch their party's future to Palin. She demonstrated time and time again that she's an ignorant buffoon who is clueless on the issues of the world and the role of the government and the individuals who hold offices within the government.

[yellowcanine]

8. I would also think that Republicans would have learned that just because someone looks good in a

suit and talks about Jesus doesn't mean he would make a good President.

[struggle4progress]

9. Republicans want a definite ideology, management style, and rhethorical technique in an Executive:

the ideology must primarily support the corporate elite, the management style must be essentially hands-off (so Executive decisions are made behind-the-scenes by a carefully selected cadre of less-visible appointees, who will deliver what the corporate elite want without big surprises), and the rhetorical technique must be simplistic and folksy (to appeal to the Republican base) and also gaffe-prone (to distract the attention of opponents from the less-visible behind-the-scenes rape and pillage

[FVZA_Colonel]

10. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if we see the Republicans go the way of the Federalists and

the Whigs.

[Rebubula]

13. I agree...

However, we need another viable party in this country.

As much as I support the Democratic Party, there are over 300 million people in this country and there is no way to place them all in one system of beliefs.

A one-party system would be a disaster.

See China, Russia, and old Iraq for details...

[FVZA_Colonel]

11. "Like Sarah Connor in 'The Terminator,'"

Isn't Sarah Connor exactly the type of character most of these right-wing ideologues normally denounce as a creation of "Godless, Feminist Hollywood?"

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Maybe, but the name coincidence is too tempting for Coulter to pass up

and anyway, she's armed, and working outside of government. That's always a big plus for the Repubs - look how keen they were to embrace Schwarzenegger.