Are we witnessing the suicide of the Republican Party?

[Cyrano]

I certainly hope so. There was a time when there were moderate Republicans that most people would consider sane. But today, they have become a crazed minority filled with venom and hatred. They are goose stepping off a cliff and trying to take as many victims with them as possible.

They’re screaming that their policies and propaganda have nothing to do with the murder of an abortion doctor, the murder of a guard at the Holocaust Museum and the countless death threats upon the most popular president in decades. They are doing everything possible to deny that through hate radio, Fox TV and their wingnut publications and websites that they have brought down a poisonous whirlwind upon us.

Yet, even in their death throes, they want to prevent anything decent from coming about. Universal health care is currently their number one target. (And, of course they’re getting help from blue dog Democrats.) Their number two target is Judge Sonia Sotomayor who is making Republican bigotry open, obvious and as disgusting as ever.

What’s wrong with these people? At what point did they start to despise Americans? When did their lust for wealth and absolute power overcome their humanity? When did their bile start to rot their souls? Beats me.

But I do know that the death of the Republican Party in its current form will provide only a short term benefit. A one-party country is dangerous. In any democracy, an opposition party is always required to help maintain the balance.

In the meantime, let me say this: Rush, Newt, Cheney, Murdoch, Coulter, Malkin, O’Reilly, Beck, and everyone I didn’t have room to mention here; your days of influence are coming to an end. I wish you could somehow be made to pay for the damage you’ve done to this country. And while I’m a devout agnostic, I wish I could believe that you all have reserved seats in some kind of hell.

[opihimoimoi]

1. Sub surface Delusion has it price upon emerging....people wake up

`

[patrice]

2. Only if the Grassroots come alive, otherwise the Repuke's "death" and putrification will poison us

all.

[nuxvomica]

3. I think they are actually hitting bottom and will recover some day

Like some people with substance abuse problems, they are not going to get help until they hit bottom. I think it's just a matter of time before they do. Ironic that Limbaugh is helping them get there.

[Liberal Veteran]

4. I'll bring the beer and potato(e) salad.

:D

[katandmoon]

5. Not really. There are plenty of Democrats who aren't that different.

[CJCRANE]

6. They have no positive goal to aspire to. They are only motivated to STOP others

from getting something, such as contraception, family planning, healthcare, marriage etc.

[Cyrano]

7. Actually, the different segments of the Republican Party do have goals

For the wealthy, their goal is unregulated greed.

For the fundamentalists, their goal is a "Christian America."

For the bigots and anti immigrants, their goal is a white America.

For those who watch Fox "News" 24/7, their goal is an America with no Democrats.

Their various goals really suck, but there's no denying that they have them. However, you are right that none of them are what a sane human being would call "positive goals."

[The River]

8. Suicide? No. A Terminal Illness? Yes

The GOP is slowly dying from several terminal illnesses
they picked up over the last 40 years.

They are infected with racism, bigotry, greed,
intolerance, bible fever and science phobia.

Eventually these diseased ideas will alienate the entire body politic
to the point that they will be cut out like a tumor and discarded.

[C_U_L8R]

9. Conservatives are incapable of evolution

fascinating psychological study reported here....

http://psychcentral.com/news/2007/09/10/brains-of-liberals-conservatives-may-work-differently/1691.html

Faced with change... Conservatives fail.

[Cyrano]

10. Interesting article, but it fails to answer the question "Why?"

This academic study is truly of value. However, I'm not certain if it takes much to observe that conservatives and liberals act differently to the same stimuli.

I guess my main problem with the study is that there's no determination as to why conservatives appear to have less of a social conscience than liberals.

Why are conservatives more prone to accept and back wars, why do they care less about universal medical coverage, and why do they care less about those in poverty?

Not that liberals are saints, but these are issues on which conservatives and liberals are on opposite sides of the fence.

Opposition to change is one thing. Opposition to improving the human condition indicates a lack of ... well, I leave it to anyone who cares to finish that sentence.

[C_U_L8R]

12. very good question

it may come down to some gene gone haywire or perhaps
it's a sad traumatic childhood event involving the loss of a binky...
Whatever the cause, the result is pretty darn ugly : - )))

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. No. But, they'll be very weak for some time unless the Dems screw up badly.

"All politics is local." As Tip O'Neill said.

Elections aren't decided on ideology. They're decided on the conditions that the electorate faces and popularity/unpopularity of candidates. Bush didn't lose because he was right wing, but because he failed. His failures were that he didn't win the unwinnable wars he started and the economy collapsed obviously due to his policies.

The same is true now. The Republicans are out and congealing to their rightwing base because the Bush government was an abject failure..if not catastrophe. The rightwing base is so strident that it is losing the "middle". Which will make the party even smaller and even less relevant.

But, the Democrats face the same dilemma. In order to keep the moderates it has to compromise it's principles which drives off the left. And, if it continues to appease the middle by pursuing the same disastrous policies as Bush it will fail and be replaced.

What it's trying to do is to pursue a sort of "kinder, gentler" version of the status quo. Still fighting lost wars and trying to prop up the economy by borrowing.

If those policies fail...well, we live in interesting times.

[bertman]

13. Hell No!! The right wing's power ebbs and flows just like the left wing's. Don't mistake

this ebb for suicide or demise. It ain't gonna happen.

[bridgit]

14. Mmmm, yes, though sadly even if that *were* the case we could ask if they thought...

that even that was their best & only choice cause if course it isn't, and so...I see them a bit more as a spent, tired, exhausted entity of tangles and obfuscations that has yet to remove it's mask that is called for no less than from time to time, and please do click the link :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxxUbrzVBt0&feature=related




Someone has to make peace with the world...the so-called republicans of America may not be those who have anything of long term value to contribute oh well



edit = i

[Kablooie]

15. You're right a Democratic only country will become corrupt just as the Repubs did.

Checks and balances, folks, checks and balances.

Without them corruption is the natural human urge.

[Cyrano]

16. I don't think that even most Dems realize the truth of this

We already have enough blue dog Dems, as well as Dems who don't believe in democratic principals, to form another party. And outside of perhaps one or two dozen outstanding people (i.e. Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Robert Wexler , and others) our party is definitely not a symbol of perfection.

But here's the thing. I'd really like to see a party come into being that brings with it a set of humane priciples. My belief is that the true progressives in the Democratic Party would quickly join them.

Unfortunately, that would leave us with a second party that resembles today's Republican Party.

So unless someone can come up with an entirely new concept of what a governing party should be, I don't know where we are going to get a responsible, sane second party.