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A good article on the last fifty years of the GOP.
Most interesting is his comparison of the GOP and North Korea. They’re both such outliers of the system that normal methods of doing business are no longer available to them
11 comments
1 |
EPR-radar Sat, Aug 31, 2013 9:41:53am |
I agree that the comparison of the House GOP to North Korea is on point. Both entities ‘deal’ with others primarily via threats of destruction.
| 2 |
aagcobb Sat, Aug 31, 2013 10:23:28am |
Now we have to wait for the process to play itself out. The GOP purification and radicalization process has left it with one narrow constituency which is shrinking relative to the rest of the country. The end game is California, where the GOP has been reduced to virtual irrelevance. Once the GOP has reached that point outside of Dixie, the next generation of Republicans will lead the party back towards the center where the voters are, because there just won’t be enough extremists left to stop them.
3 |
Shockingly, Pathetically Low Sat, Aug 31, 2013 11:22:15am |
re: #2 aagcobb
Now we have to wait for the process to play itself out. The GOP purification and radicalization process has left it with one narrow constituency which is shrinking relative to the rest of the country. The end game is California, where the GOP has been reduced to virtual irrelevance. Once the GOP has reached that point outside of Dixie, the next generation of Republicans will lead the party back towards the center where the voters are, because there just won’t be enough extremists left to stop them.
ASAP, please. I don’t like to think about how much damage they can do in the meantime.
| 4 |
Renaissance_Man Sat, Aug 31, 2013 11:46:00am |
The problem, of course, is that with a news media that insists on presenting everything as a competition between two equally valid points of view, that what we think of as ‘the centre’ becomes more and more crazed and extreme all the time.
| 5 |
XtremeDave Sat, Aug 31, 2013 1:11:06pm |
re: #2 aagcobb
Now we have to wait for the process to play itself out. The GOP purification and radicalization process has left it with one narrow constituency which is shrinking relative to the rest of the country. The end game is California, where the GOP has been reduced to virtual irrelevance. Once the GOP has reached that point outside of Dixie, the next generation of Republicans will lead the party back towards the center where the voters are, because there just won’t be enough extremists left to stop them.
Except the thing to remember about California is that the process doesn’t just magically play itself out. It takes organization and hard work by liberal organizations (such as labor, students, immigrants rights orgs, etc) to enact reforms which make government work again. The California of 2013, in which the state is fiscally stable and the Republican party is all but non-existent wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the reforms of redistricting and eliminating super-majority requirements for the budget (super-majority for taxes still exists, and can only be removed by the voters).
This can be repeated nationally. The Senate super-majority requirements should be eliminated (I’m fine with keeping the talking filibuster, but requiring 60 votes for any bill to pass is undemocratic), and redistricting rules in every state should be reformed to take the process out of the hands of politicians and put it in the hands of citizens. There’s no defense of why despite receiving 1 million less votes in 2012, the Republicans maintain a majority in the House.
This nation can’t wait for the demographic death of the GOP to happen, real reform needs to happen before they can do anymore damage.
| 6 |
aagcobb Sat, Aug 31, 2013 1:28:20pm |
re: #5 XtremeDave
Except the thing to remember about California is that the process doesn’t just magically play itself out. It takes organization and hard work by liberal organizations (such as labor, students, immigrants rights orgs, etc) to enact reforms which make government work again. The California of 2013, in which the state is fiscally stable and the Republican party is all but non-existent wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the reforms of redistricting and eliminating super-majority requirements for the budget (super-majority for taxes still exists, and can only be removed by the voters).
This can be repeated nationally. The Senate super-majority requirements should be eliminated (I’m fine with keeping the talking filibuster, but requiring 60 votes for any bill to pass is undemocratic), and redistricting rules in every state should be reformed to take the process out of the hands of politicians and put it in the hands of citizens. There’s no defense of why despite receiving 1 million less votes in 2012, the Republicans maintain a majority in the House.
This nation can’t wait for the demographic death of the GOP to happen, real reform needs to happen before they can do anymore damage.
That would be nice, but you don’t think the GOP is going to agree to reforms which cause them to lose their safe districts, do you?
7 |
Absalom, Absalom, Obdicut Sat, Aug 31, 2013 2:39:27pm |
re: #5 XtremeDave
If the senate weren’t already an undemocratic institution— if senators had anything at all to do with population numbers— then I’d disagree with you, but as it stands, I agree with you heartily.
8 |
thecommodore Sat, Aug 31, 2013 6:43:59pm |
re: #5 XtremeDave
This nation can’t wait for the demographic death of the GOP to happen, real reform needs to happen before they can do anymore damage.
One more thing to remember - Republicans may be unable to win presidential elections in the foreseeable future, but they still do very well at the Congressional level (particularly the House), and state and local levels, and it is at those levels that they are doing the most damage. One reason for this is because right wingers vote in mid term and down ticket elections, and other people don’t. 2010 would probably have been a big year for Republicans simply because they had been smacked down hard in the past two cycles are were bound to bounce back, and because the out party in terms of the White House usually does well in midterms in particular, and with unemployment over 10% at the time, that would only help them too. With all that said, I am convinced that there is no way they would have gained 63 seats in the House, and more than half the statehouses if Democrats had showed up to vote.
So the moral of the story is…VOTE! Maybe you are disappointed in the Democrats and Obama in particular (especially with him going full throttle after Syria), but staying home only allowed these extremists to walk in. I couldn’t put it in any more stronger terms. VOTE! Staying home is a vote for the GOP.
9 |
nines09 Sat, Aug 31, 2013 7:25:56pm |
re: #8 thecommodore
The Cult formerly known as the GOP has taken thug politics to a new level. Lie cheat steal along with 24/7/365 tv and radio hacks repeating the line of the day. That a vile pile of offal such as Rush still commands the fealty of this corrupt band of grifters is proof enough of the bigotry along with the non stop attacks on women and minorities and any social contract that helps American citizens. In the past, before I was forced to admit that it was all a pack of lies from the right, I would vote for who I deemed the best candidate irregardless of party. That is never going to happen again. I now see a vote for a GOP candidate as a vote against not only my self interests, but my nations self interest. The only way to have any redemption of the GOP is for it to crash and burn and lose everything everywhere. Then and only then might sanity enter that tent. Until then I would vote for a brick before a GOP/TP CLOWN.
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