re: #397 Skip Intro

Meanwhile as the GOP rushes to the far, far right to lock up the teabaggers,

Poll: Tea party support drops to new lows

Here’s a free tip to the GOP from me: Stop paying attention to the talk radio psychos, the Breitbart psychos, the Drudge psychos, and all the other psychos who are driving your party into their lunatic fantasy world.

chron.com

This is the natural extension of something I have been predicting for years. The business model of the RW bloggers, radio pundits and TV talking heads is to build and maintain a steady stream of paranoid, conspiracy theory driven hatred for anyone and anything that doesn’t go along with their ideology.

We’ve seen the marked increases in extremist rhetoric since Obama became elected and it seems to get worse every year. Why? Simple: The old talking points become stale and are no longer effective, so then the RWNJ commentators have to come up with new talking points, new conspiracies, new paranoias to retain their audiences and by extension, their bank accounts.

Like a drug addict who develops a resistance to his substance of choice, the same is happening in the right wing of America. As a result, the commentators have to stretch into ever more crazy and extremist territory to give their audiences the “hit” they’re after.

We’ve seen this recently with the way the once covert White Supremacist leanings of MANY GOP members and supporters have become far more OVERT.

The GOP politicians in the House are starting to realize full blown crazy can only get them so far and are desperately trying (and failing) to move the discourse back to sane territory.

It won’t work though, because the RW media machine is too obsessed with going the OTHER way. They have to keep ramping up the crazy to keep the cash flowing in. For them, there’s no other option. This is the monster they’ve created and fed and now they are entirely reliant on it for their own well being.

Thus comes the question, sticking with the drug dealer analogy:

What happens if there’s an overdose?

That time, it appears, it fast approaching. We’ve already seen the chaos in the House follwing Boehner’s resignation and the deep splits in the party preventing the easy ascension of a successor.

In addition the 2016 election has the potential to be a bellwether moment for the GOP. If they get roundly stomped by Clinton as they did by Obama in 2012 we could see a whole lot of changes in the GOP.

Following that outcome, the GOP has two choices: Continue to go full blown crazy and be reduced to a regional party with no chance at the White House indefinitely or have the adults in the room (if there are any left by that point) step up and jettison the crazies, realizing the ONLY way to fix things is a drastic overhaul of the entire party.

Addicts can recover of course, but in this scenario the GOP will STILL have the RW media working AGAINST them. You can expect the crazy to continue to flow if Clinton becomes President and probably veer off into extreme misogynist territory, starting the cycle all over again.

So now the problem becomes: How do you get the addict off the drugs when they have such easy access to the dealer?

This is the question the GOP will have to answer at some point.

This is the question that will determine the future of the party.

But who will come up with an answer?