"The Republicans Are Now the Stupid Party"

[charlie]

Another stinging post mortem, could've been written by any number of perceptive bloggers.

Except it wasn't.

Jeffrey Hart is professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College. He wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor. He wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, when governor of California, and for Richard Nixon.

... Sarah Palin is now the heroine of the Republican base. Scary. During the campaign it became obvious that she is completely ignorant on the principal issues. It never became widely known that she is a religious nut: she believes in the imminent End of Days and the "Rapture," in which the saved will be suddenly wooshed up to heaven -- a notion that has no basis in scripture or anything else. She believes she was elected governor because of a laying-on-of-hands by an African clergyman who had run a witch out of town for causing automobile accidents.

This stuff makes William Jennings Bryan look like Martin Heidegger. I think the recent electoral disaster will energize reasonable Republicans to form a caucus with the party. Eisenhower was a prudential, common sense Republican, who loathed extremism and arrogant ignorance. He knew the New Deal could not be repealed. He once said that Senator William Knowland "tested the limits of human stupidity." Despite Watergate, Nixon was a successful center-right president, and first-rate on foreign policy. Reagan too was a successful center-right president. It is no accident that in the election, Julie Nixon Eisenhower and David Eisenhower supported Obama.

In its embrace of the religious right under George W. Bush, the Republican Party became the stupid party. And committing suicide along with it has been the conservative movement. The party united around god, guns and gays is finished.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-06/the-republicans-are-now-the-stupid-party/

[elleng]

1. 'NOW?'

HAVE BEEN!!!!

[ColbertWatcher]

9. Uh, yeah. THIS^^^ n/t

[CAG]

2. OBVIOUSLY he's just another librul, why he consorted with the likes of

Reaga.... oh wait a minute....

[jacksonian]

3. Palin makes William Jennings Bryan look like Martin Heidegger

great line.

[Xipe Totec]

4. Sarah Palin is the heroin of the Republican base

[Downtown Hound]

5. "Now" the stupid party?

No, they've been that for a long, long time. It's just that since a lot of the nation used to be Republican, they were too stupid to see it. It took two failed wars, the erosion of the constitution, New Orleans being lost through gross incompetence, and a financial meltdown for some of them to finally wake up.

[Booster]

6. I didn't read the whole article, but I hope he mentioned that

Ron Reagan, Jr and Patty Davis also were for Obama.

[supernova]

7. Agree and add that Reagan was also STUPID

He was an elderly pretty boy who could read a script, nothing more.

[Jade Fox]

8. With their support of Right Wing talk radio....

the Republicans have nurtured and rewarded stupidity, anti-intellectualism, and bigotry nationwide in order to get votes.

If the Republicans don't want to be the stupid party, they have to stop promoting stupidity. Of course, this is a double-edged sword: Non-stupid people tend toward Liberalism

[Batgirl]

10. The GOP obviously needs to hear a lot of this kind of serious self-criticism

if they want to become viable again. Which seems unlikely since they've shown their leadership to largely consist of people incapable of admitting error. Remember, nothing is ever their fault.

I think when the vicious bloodletting tapers off, they'll try to figure out some new marketing rollout to disguise their same old shit. It will of course include a new buzz phrase intended to do for them what "compassionate conservatism" did in 2000. That's all the current bunch seems capable of -- feeble repackaging efforts that are all about gimmicks. It really seems like it would take a miracle for them to undergo any fundamental change/reinvention that would involve distancing themselves from the fundie whackjob base.

[mckara]

11. Good Article