WHY Responsible Republicans Are Nearly EXTINCT

[Segami]

ENDANGERED SPECIES

by Newsweek's Jacob Weiberg



" Do you remember the Responsible Republicans? In the 1980s small herds of them still roamed around Washington. In 1982 they stampeded over Ronald Reagan's veto of a tax increase designed to mitigate the fiscal harm of his 1981 tax cut. In 1986 they passed bipartisan immigration reform. In 1990 they were spotted with President George H.W. Bush at Andrews Air Force Base, conspiring to reduce the deficit.


After the Andrews summit, however, Double-R glimpses outside captivity became increasingly rare. With their habitats in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Coast under threat, their status moved from "threatened" to "endangered." During the battle over his health-care plan, President Obama was unable to find a single one to serve as a mascot. There continue to be rumors of their return around issues such as immigration and climate change. Yet we have now gone several years without a confirmed sighting.


If Responsible Republicans are in fact approaching extinction, I think we can identify the crucial event that signaled their demise. It was a December 1993 memo by conservative strategist and commentator William Kristol. Kristol's advice about how Republicans should respond to Bill Clinton's 1993 health-care effort pushed the GOP away from any cooperation with the other side. His message marks the pivotal moment when Republicans shifted from fundamentally responsible partners in governing the country to uncompromising, hyperpartisan antagonists on all issues.


In his five-page memo, Kristol took aim at Bob Dole and other congressional Republicans who were then working to find a compromise around the shared goals of universal coverage and cost containment. Kristol called for the GOP to "adopt an aggressive and uncompromising counterstrategy designed to delegitimize the proposal." He argued that a bipartisan deal on health care would be a political victory for Democrats and a defeat for the GOP. "Unqualified political defeat of the Clinton health care proposal," Kristol wrote, " … would be a monumental setback for the president, and an incontestable piece of evidence that Democratic welfare-state liberalism remains firmly in retreat."


Slowly at first, then all at once, Republicans adopted this zero-sum view of politics. Newt Gingrich, the truculent House minority leader, had risen to power attacking the more conciliatory Republican leadership that preceded him. Dole soon stopped cooperating as well, responding to Clinton's 1994 State of the Union address by echoing Kristol's line that there was "no health-care crisis." Remaining Double-Rs were left out in the cold by their party, and hopes for a deal died.


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[gratuitous]

1. The question is

Why don't any Republicans recognize how badly their hyperpartisanship has damaged their party? Or have they all left to become "independents"? The public face and voice of the GOP is Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Not a recipe for electoral success.

[Jade Fox]

6. They are very slow learners.....

and I'm not saying that to be mean. They are very slow learners.

Conservatives have no sense of when the wind has shifted, and they like (and believe in) ideas and policies that 'always' work.

[Segami]

11. I also found that some wrap themselves around the Republican party flag colors

simply because their father/mother or grandparents associated themselves with that same party for generations. In fact, they have become conditioned habitual party followers void of any true understanding as to their actions.

[drmeow]

15. My grandfather's

family were all staunch Republicans while my grandmother was always a Democrat. Recently at my grandmother's funeral, my father's cousin commented to a few people that his one beef with my grandmother was that she was a lifelong Democrat (she was 100 when she died so we're talking about 1927 on). Later my aunt commented that my grandfather's brother (who never married) probably would have disinherited/stopped speaking to my grandfather if he had ever known that my grandfather switched to the Democratic Party later in life. Even my father was a registered Republican for years despite his mother and his personal ideology.

Because primaries are by party, party registration can be very public. There is a lot of family pressure to stay with the GOP. I could be wrong but I don't think the same pressure is there with the Democrats. I think Democrats used to (since GWB I think this has probably changed) view a family member who left the Democratic Party to join the GOP as misguided whereas Republicans see a family member who leaves the GOP for the Democratic Party as having betrayed them. It is related to the patriarchal/authoritarian ideology of the GOP.

[eppur_se_muova]

17. Isn't holding onto old ideas the definition of a Conservative?

They say they hold onto old VALUES, but really ... they've lost the ability to make that distinction.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. Many of them do

They're marginalized now. Do you think Limbaugh/Beck/Hannity/Bachmann/etc. are going to let anyone who isn't a screech monkey get a word in edgewise?

Ask around among your friends. Chances are good that you know one or more such Republicans. Talk to them, and let them tell you about their experiences and reactions.

The party is committing suicide by cutting the majority of its members out of their own mainstream, and existing purely for the convenience of a small elite of cynical thugs. The wackos have taken over the party and poisoned the well, and in 15 years it will be impossible to find anyone who will admit to teabaggery. This is why I say that the Republican Party will soon be defunct -- unless it is deliberately kept alive by money and the press, each of which has uses for the occasional freak show.

--d!

[Demeter]

2. They Died or Were Forcibly Retired by Gingrich and Rove

No great mystery.

[Jade Fox]

3. very good....

This is a good bit:

"Under Obama, Republicans have simply replayed the script, opposing everything the president proposes, looking for heretics to burn, and calling the other side extreme—though this time they have been without success in blocking the president's major initiative."

This is why I'm not worried about the fall elections. Once again the GOP is displaying its non-existent ability to learn and adapt. This not 1994. They can't reuse the Gingrich playbook and expect to win.

[AnArmyVeteran]

18. Just the fact that Gingrich & Palin are being considered as the GOP nominee is proof of their demise

Gingrich, Palin and other far right extremists could never win a general election. Sane, reasonable people see tea baggers and the current GOP leadership as extremists with no ideas, and void of any willingness to accomplish anything. Most people can put two and two together and come up with four. Conservative extremists can't. But sane people can.

[Jade Fox]

22. The GOP seems determined to drive off a cliff.....

rather than participate in governing our country. This suicidal quality is scary. Time was the Republicans were willing to cut their loses and move on. They did so very effectively after Nixon's resignation, and only 6 years later were ushering in the Reagan era. If saner elements in the Party had moved against Bush/Cheney/Rove in Bush's second term, when anger against Bushco really started coalescing, the GOP could be on the way to recovery now.

Of course, there are those in the GOP who believe Nixon could have survived if the Party had fought for him. Those elements seem to now have forced a "never admit wrongdoing, never give up, never compromise" attitude on the party as a whole. And it is killing them.

[Grand Taurean]

4. The militant reactionary right wing

is forcing them out.

[TygrBright]

5. Their Corporate Overlords sponsored safari after safari...

...and they were hunted to extinction by the teabaggers and birthers.

bemusedly,
Bright

[AnArmyVeteran]

20. When will a documentary about their extinction be aired?

Could you imagine our country with nothing but birthers and tea baggers as leaders? Could you imagine an all tea bagger cabinet, president, etc. Or an all tea bagger congress?

It's laughable. Comedians need to get together and write a comedy about an all right wing extremist government. Even a SNL skit would be good.

[craigmatic]

8. it depends on your definition of responsibility. alot of normal non-teabaggers support their tactics

if it'll accomplish their goals.

[nealmhughes]

9. I wonder what Jacob Javits and Mayor Lindsay would do were they alive still when they saw Boehner

and Rove and Beck and Hannity and then the teabaggers?

[applegrove]

10. Right Wing leaders want america to go bankrupt like California. That way they can remake

the country in the way they want from scratch. Sinking the government in the bathtub.

[AnArmyVeteran]

19. I've heard that before from conservatives...

It's a mutant biblical belief that something has to be destroyed so it can be rebuilt or resurrected. The looney tune Glenn Beck said he wants the US to go through a worse depression than what happened in the 20s and 30s. He said that way things can be rebuilt in a new utopian 'conservative world'.

Beck throws around 'god' and 'faith' all the time on his freak radio and television shows just to dupe the mindless religious right zombies who fall to their knees and start to chant if they hear the word "Jesus". But if his mostly illiterate and ignorant audiences actually listened to Beck they would realize he not only doesn't follow the teachings of their Jeeeesssssssuuuuss, but actually breaks the 9th Commandment every day by bearing false witness against his neighbors. Beck lies constantly about others because he is making huge amounts of money for doing so. But the religious right zombies are too stupid to realize they are being played for fools by a con man.

A month ago Glenn Beck told his audience to leave their churches if they find anything there that even hints of 'social justice'. Beck claims to be a Christian, but if he was, how did he miss even one of the 2,000 references to social justice in the Bible? Beck is a classic con man and hypocrite. But a typical conservative extremist. I'd like to see God try to cram Beck through the eye of a needle to get to heaven.

One more thing: The Bible says "Take the plank out of your own eye before trying to remove the splinter out of another's" and it also states "judge not, lest ye be judged". Right wing radio and television hosts do nothing but judge others, but their conservative extremist fans fail to see they are virtually worshipping the worst hypocrites in the country. How are they able to deceive themselves into believing Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh are 'Christians' and talking about 'God's' word? I find their delusion fascinating, but troubling...

[applegrove]

27. When I really think about millions of people being duped by the right wing leadership I feel

sad. Regularly I'm just mad at the right wing base for being so deluded.

[troubledamerican]

12. ASK NOT why America hates Rapepublicans. Ask why Rapepublicans hate America.

[OHdem10]

13. There seems to be a purge going on. If you are not really far right

you do not fit. Look at what they are doing to Crist,
McCain, Bennet...shall I continue???

[Segami]

14. If thats the case (and I agree with you), they will always remain a 38% - 40% party.

[glitch]

16. Not extinct, just rebranded as "Centrist" Democrats.

They were purged out of the Republican Party, as Progressives are being purged out of the Democratic Party.
From the NeoCon/NeoLib view a happy new two-party equilibrium: Far Right and Right.

[Segami]

21. Purging ' Progressives ' from the Democratic Party might be easier said than done. Quite frankly, I

see it the other way around where NeoLib's are being identified and exposed. I don't see any retaliatory fallout from Democratic base members against ' progressives ' unlike the moderates or centrists.

[glitch]

28. I like your view. nt

[Rage Inc.]

23. Kristol Knocked

He and Hitchens are my two most hated neocons!

[AnArmyVeteran]

25. Total dishonest weasel and a coward too. He is another war hawk who loves to send others to war.

[Segami]

26. Oh yes, they LOVE playing tough guy on the world stage using our military might while sending

other people's loved ones to fight their insane battles and in return for their mortal sacrifice, they get a folded U.S. flag. The time has come for these coward politicians that continue to vote to wage these insane wars to be forced to enlist their children in the front line on the battlefield.

[Orsino]

24. They're in no danger.

The forces that made the GOP a festering boil have corrupted most of the Democratic Party, too.

The Republicans serve these forces better--they always have--and are supremely well protected against the consequences of their fuck-ups. I would say that they're invulnerable.