What killed the Republican Party ?

[kentuck]

Their numbers are down to 21 % of people identify with the Republican Party. Will they come back alive or are they dead forever? And who was most responsible for the demise of the Republican Party?

[margotb822]

1. Reality

The reality is that they're only out for themselves and their policies don't (can't, won't) work.

[calimary]

2. Don't care. Just so long as somebody does.

Or something. I truly don't care. I'll take either one. Or both - in any combination. The deader that political party become, the longer the Good Guys will have to fix everything they broke and clean up every mess they left behind. This particular recovery project is GIGANTIC and is gonna take a loooooonnnnnnnnnnnggggg time.

[Skittles]

3. I believe Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber played their parts

:rofl:

[lpbk2713]

4. "All of the above" pretty well sums it up.

We should never let anyone forget how evil and corrupt these people were. Never.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Yep

[bdamomma]

55. apparently the repigs have a very low opinion of the American people

and they are hoping we have very short memories, NEVER will we forget what they have done.

[PDJane]

5. Add racism in there..........

The southern Dixiecrats.

[Kalyke]

62. Not just the South.

Think about the "Hurricane Alley"-crats.

That swath of red from Texas up to Iowa and over to left a bit is far more red than the South.

[Ghost in the Machine]

7. Other: Neocons....

They're a scourge on everything they touch...

[Quantess]

8. All of the above, in this order:

#2
#4
#5
#7
#3
#1
#6

[xchrom]

9. reagan -- it just took a long time. nt

[leftstreet]

12. I was gonna say Reaganomics - just took time for the death to Trickle Down

[kentuck]

13. Mind if I add that to the poll?

:-)

[firedupdem]

10. Gotta add the racists n/t

[HubertHeaver]

11. Gerald R Ford when he pardoned Nixon. The denizens of the dark that were

spawned in the cesspool that was the Nixon whitehouse were allowed to survive and attach themselves to Reagan/BushI and swamp the BushII administrations. Without investigations and prosecutions the republicans learned only to cover their tracks more carefully.

[Dappleganger]

18. Good point...

so many of the nasty people who contributed to their party came out of that era.

[bdamomma]

57. yes especially Dick

[Marr]

14. The GW Bush Administration pulled the cover off the machine.

That's what's ravaged the GOP. The Bush Administration put all those dirty little secrets on the table and called them virtues.

For example, when Reagan wanted to conduct illegal wars, he had to use proxies. The establishment understood that the populace would not stand for *costly* wars based on lies. Sure, they'd tolerate the occasional Panama or Grenada-- but not another Vietnam.

The GW Bush Administration was so overconfident in themselves and their extremist ideology, so disdainful of the rest of the country, they decided to put an illegal war out in the open and make everyone salute it. They did the same thing with spying, and torture, and everything else. Remember when Bush came right out on television and said that he'd ordered this illegal surveillance and would keep on doing it until his term was up?

Well, you can only do that so long. It's not like they really changed the game all that much-- they just ramped it up and demanded everyone accept it openly. Americans don't like to look at their own dirty laundry.

[Toucano]

15. Incompetence and Greed. n-t

[Juche]

16. Katrina and Iraq

The public didn't really start to abandon the GOP until 2005.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-republicans





I would wager Katrina and finally figuring out we were lied into Iraq did it. Katrina is a perfect example of GOP leadership. Give trillions in tax cuts to the wealthy and spend trillions on wars of choice, and then watch helplessly as an american city floods because the infrastructure crumbled because of a lack of funding. I think that was a giant slap in the face to the american people of the penalties of instant gratification and GOP policy.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

21. Katrina was the tipping point

helped by all the other stuff going on at the time - Schiavo, Cindy Sheehan being attacked, Abramoff, social security privatization schemes, etc

2005 was definitely the moment everything flipped

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

50. Agree. Katrina changed everything.

Exposed cowardly corrupt inept cronyism. Americans watched Americans die, starve and beg on TV for assistance from a callous and indifferent administration that was more interested in playing politics than saving lives.

[snot]

17. The fact that you can't fool all the people all the time.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

19. Yep, Reaganism is coming home to roost

It's not that Republicans haven't been acting as conservatives, as Rush and Sean claim.

It's that they were perfectly rightwing, and the mess that resulted was the logical outgrowth of a generation of policies by these Ayn Rand-ian idealogues

[old mark]

20. All of it. They have not made policy decisions based on reality,

and no longer seem to have any policy at all other than to oppose President Obama because he is black and a Democrat. They have absolutely nothing positive to offer the country. I think they will pretty much die out, with several smaller splinter parties on the very very right attacking each other for being "too liberal".

They are fucking useless and crazy and deserved to die out years ago-they were just too stupid and full of themselves to realise it.

mark

[jobycom]

22. Ronald Reagan equals "All of the above." They died from a flawed ideology

From top to bottom, Reagan's ideology has brought nothing but pain. His tax cuts gutted the government and created deficits and debt we may never climb out of, his economic ideology protected large corporations from smaller competitors and rewarded corporations for playing shell games with money rather than creating new production, his social policies created divisions and wealth disparity at a time when the nation was starting to make progress, his foreign policy was based on the stupid assumption that the world would bow to our strength rather than rising in revolt against our brutality... On and on.

The basic problem was Reagan's belief that greed would stimulate people to do good. Every policy, from economics to foreign affairs, was centered around the childish attitude that Americans should do what they wanted without regard for consequences, and the country is now discovering that consequences catch up to you whether you acknowledge them or not.

[jacksonian]

60. bingo

couldn't have said it better.

Every policy, from economics to foreign affairs, was centered around the childish attitude that Americans should do what they wanted without regard for consequences, and the country is now discovering that consequences catch up to you whether you acknowledge them or not.

[lonestarnot]

23. All and then some! Dance dance dance on that fucking grave!

[YOY]

24. The fact they they could not change course or correct themselves.

When what you're doing is fucking up something else vital then STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND RETHINK IT. Instead they ignored every negative repercussion they created from the get go.

I do give them props for cheerleading and lockstepping...not to mention duping the general public into believing this was the status quo.

[Lyric]

25. Religious fanatics.

Sure, Reagan did damage, but nothing that would have scared away moderates like what the fundie whackjobs have done.

When they let the Moral Majority start dictating policy and positions, it was the beginning of the end, and THAT took more than just Reagan.

[elocs]

26. The Republican Party is down but not dead. They'll be back one day

when Democrats get too smug and complacent and believe they will always hold power. You cannot base the death of the Republican Party on the results of a couple elections.

[Salviati]

27. The fact that the party is made up of a hodgepodge of radically different constituancies...

Which leaves them no coherant philosophy to run on, hence nothing but wedge issues and hatred.

[Quantess]

28. I think it's bizarre that so many DUers are voting "Ronald Reagan"

I was 10 years old when Reagan was elected, and I remember being optimistic about his presidency just like my parents. Reagan remains a little glimmer of reminiscence of how the good times seemed, to a person of my age. I was just as happy with Carter, because I was little then, too.

My family has since agreed that Jimmy Carter probably got shafted.

However, I will defend that Reagan was NOT the worst President. He set the tone, he set the precedent for unlawful behavior and yes, Herbert Walker Bush was as bad as Reagan and less likeable to boot, but,

G.W BUSH is THE WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY!


So, it's bizzarre that so many DUers think Ronald Reagan is somehow behind the recent plummet in Republican popularity.

This IS about the final death throes, isn't it?

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

29. I think that the head has been blown off

Zombie Reagan at long last, and he's all the Repigs have had for 30 years. Even zombies can die, though Dog knows this one ate enough brains on its final slog to the grave - viz the dildoheads, I meant dittoheads. Reagan dug the grave, but credit must be given where it is deserved: DicKKK and KKKarl strangled moderately sane Republicanism and ultimately stuffed the coffin by way of their simian puppet, the brush-cutter in thief.

They won't be back until they find their next Eisenhower; the procession of pseudo-Reagans that reached its logical culmination in the imbecilic and completely incompetent Chimpoleon ain't gonna butter any electoral turnips for a long time. Palin? Gingrich? Little Boy Bobby Jindal? Remember how well George "Macaca" Allen worked out? In the words of my late, great fraternity brother Jim K, it is to laugh!

[Quantess]

31. you write so pretty.

Maybe even like a poser.

[fujiyama]

30. Reagan laid the poisonous seeds for the current economic collapse

but all the major players plaid their roles - Bush Sr, and a big part of it was Newt Gingrich.

Bush pretty much made sure it was dead and Sarah Palin pretty much nailed the coffin shut for years to come.

Oh and Limbaugh. That fucker played a part in there too...and Coulter and Hannity, and Fox...

[MADem]

32. Other--too many questions in this poll. Yes, they will be back.

It may take a very long time, though, and if they come back, they'll come back as an "opposition" party to excess. That's how we finally got rid of them, after all.

[Golden Raisin]

33. The Republican Party is not

dead --- only dormant. Be wary of complacency. They are only one big domestic terror attack or financial crisis away from ugly resurgence.

[ColbertWatcher]

34. Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and their 24/7 campaigning. The fuckers. n/t

[WeDidIt]

35. Other

A Widespread Demand For Ideological Purity

[timtom]

36. All of the above.

A constant, unbridled hatred of all things humane, the celebration of greed, the never-ending hi-jacking of patriotism, christianity, etc., the glorification of war and violence...

Oh, my list goes on for a very long time.

[GTurck]

37. As an active....

Democrat I have to remind those here who weren't born then that in the 60's we were just as clueless as the GOP to reality. The "limousine liberals" that dominated the party then were in great measure why so many turned to the Republicans and elected Richard Nixon president.
It is not good to have too much concentrated power and/or influence on either side of the spectrum.

[skooooo]

38. Ronald Reagan?

That doesn't make any sense to me at all.

[Maeve]

39. That great cause of tragedy--hubris

And I'd put Rove and Cheney as two major fonts of it. There were some good things in the Republican party, some vision that was true--put the love of power, unexamined and unshakable self-belief and the total disdain for any other POV would have been recognized in ancient Greece as leading to a downfall.

Shoot, they would have seen it if they'd actually read the Bible they touted--"pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall".

[Echo In Light]

40. Fascism - I voted "All of The Above"

[Psychic Consortium]

41. Incompetence and evil cannot be sustained. nt

[shadowknows69]

42. Other: Not quite dead yet methinks

You have to cut off the head, stuff it with garlic, bury it in holy ground, burn the body, scatter the ashes on different holy ground and even then you should do all of this during the daylight.

[Echo In Light]

43. True. Their ilk remain interwoven throughout the corporate/state nexus

You don't have to have them in the WH in order for some of their aims/goals to be diligently looked after, set into motion, and/or perpetuated.

[Tim01]

44. The republican party is not dead.

The republican leaders have pissed off everybody including republicans for a number of years straight while they were in power. Now they are not in power and so they can't be blamed for anything.
The republicans will rotate back to power at some time, and if democrats choose to resurrect the anti-gun platform it will be fairly easy for republicans after a few years, even if they have nothing substantial to offer.

[Why Syzygy]

45. Stealing two presidential elections didn't help them at all.

But I voted the religious.

[Vinca]

46. Idiots like Rep. Paul Broun, who I've been listening to on the

Washington Journal this morning. The man has said the phrase "illegal aliens" in nearly every sentence, said "everyone in this country has access to healthcare (emergency rooms)," doesn't want "socialized medicine" (he's a doctor and apparently doesn't have a clue what socialized medicine is) and hates Kathleen Sibelius because she's "pro-abortion" and "life begins at fertilization." If some woman had the bad judgement to marry this guy, they must hold funeral services over the toilet bowl once a month since that's where fertilized eggs that don't implant end up.

[Enthusiast]

47. They are not dead!

Don't fool yourselves. If the economy continues the downhill trend Republicans will once again be a competitive brand.

Every time I turn on the TV I am reminded how much they are not dead as their positions are represented far beyond their elected numbers. And even if they vanish as a party, the forces, actions and destructive corporate influence, we see in Republicans, will remain.

[DemoTex]

48. Greed

[HillWilliam]

49. For once Tweety hit it on the head

In '64 they made a Faustian deal with the Dixiecrats (and klan) and that shoved them further right and down a path of racism and hatred. In '94 they made another Faustian deal with the religious reich and that shoved them even further right and further down a path of hatreds and smug self-righteousness. Reaganism and leftover Nixon cronies set the tone for lawlessness. Combine that with a Calvinistic self-righteous pentient for rationalization and a dearth of introspection, there's a perfect storm for implosion.

They built their own bomb, lit the fuse, and stuck it down their britches.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of loons.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

51. Hate.

It's hard to have a party based on hating:

government in general
immigrants
separation of church and state
womens rights
science
anyone other than heterosexual
diplomacy
regulation and oversight
environmental responsibility

[kentuck]

53. Correction on the poll:

When it was edited, the number for "all of the above" was at 30. Ronald Reagan should have 9 votes - not 39 and "all of the above" should have 30 more votes.

(The time elapsed before I could correct it)

[endarkenment]

52. Teh Stupid.

[L0oniX]

54. ...

[TayTay]

56. arrogance, ignorance and indifference n/t

[kentuck]

58. CORRECTION on the poll:

When it was edited, the number for "all of the above" was at 30. Ronald Reagan should have 9 votes - not 39 and "all of the above" should have 30 more votes minus 8. And "Other" should have 8 more votes.

(The time elapsed before I could correct it)

[bdamomma]

59. abuse of power and greed.

[slackmaster]

61. It's not dead. It's just resting.

[closeupready]

63. Being 100% honest, I would have to say GWB and his crew.

Focus on the Family and the massive debt, etc. - all of that pales in comparison to him.

[harun]

64. Other: Manifestation of Neo-Conservatism.