The GOP Delusion

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The GOP Delusion

How conservatives were mugged by reality

By bubba zanetti

Wingnuts • November 2012 • Views: 1,561

33 Revolutions Per Minute:

Conservatism has became a faith-based ecosystem, resistant to any facts that complicate its version of reality. It is driven by apocalyptic terrors. The future of the republic itself is always in danger. The Constitution is destined for the shredder. The American eagle hangs its head. Ironically, the two issues that come closest to a real existential threat — climate change and the 2008 banking crisis — don’t trigger any anxiety in conservatives, while the phantasm of a socialist dictatorship has them trembling with fear and rage.

-DORIAN LYNSKEY is the author of 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs

Recent Pages by bubba zanetti:
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3 comments

watching you tiny alien kittens are Thu, Nov 8, 2012 9:04:57pm

Pretty good article with good sources linked to for further reading.

The insanity of the current GOP position is threefold. Firstly, it rules out the bipartisan collaboration on which the efficacy of the US political system depends, and means that Washington wastes its time with fruitless and costly battles like the one over the debt ceilingin summer 2011. Conservatives then have the nerve to complain that it is Obama, whose attempts at consensus have been militantly rebuffed from day one, who has divided the nation. According to two scholars who have been studying Washington for over 40 years:

_{The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.}

Secondly, it punishes the moderates. By the standards of the modern GOP Reagan would never have won the nomination, Romney’s father George would most likely have been a Democrat and a British Conservative like David Cameron wouldn’t last five minutes. Romney was forced into the impossible position of having to pander to the hardliners in the primaries and then trying to pull a last-minute moderate switcheroo in the debates, which was the first time the American public actually warmed to him.

Thirdly, it is based on the fantasy that the American public deep down wants paranoid movement conservatism. Already you can hear the voices crying that the GOP would have won if Romney weren’t such a moderate wimp. Extreme progressives don’t really believe that their values are shared by the nation at large but their conservative counterparts, insanely, do.

Destro Fri, Nov 9, 2012 6:53:17am

re: #1 ghazidor

While I am enjoying the gloating, I am starting to remember I was afraid the far right would go full on crazy if Obama won. Like OKC bombing crazy.....

Joanne Fri, Nov 9, 2012 8:33:43am

re: #2 Destro

While I am enjoying the gloating, I am starting to remember I was afraid the far right would go full on crazy if Obama won. Like OKC bombing crazy.....

Let's hope not. That's all I can say.

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