The GOP gets LIT UP by African American writer who embraces its ideology but is REVULSED by it

[wndycty]

Today's GOP a political bedlam
I find myself wondering today whether Abraham Lincoln would feel comfortable in the Republican Party of 2009.

By Don Wycliff

September 27, 2009

-snip-
And don't give me that garbage about playing the race card and how the existence of that nincompoop Michael Steele as party chairman proves the party's bona fides on race. Steele would be an embarrassment to any party that had a capacity for it, but the GOP is no longer such a party. Steele's chairmanship is as much an act of cynicism as was the selection last year of the manifestly incompetent Sarah Palin as the party's nominee for vice president.

How did the party of Lincoln allow itself to be taken over by the claque of crazies who now define it? How is it that a black person who in many respects is attracted to Republican ideology finds himself revulsed by the party, which seems to have fallen under the control of people who just can't for the life of them make peace with the outcome of the Civil War?

I have watched the party's standard-bearer in last year's election stand, seemingly tongue-tied, in front of an audience howling the most vile lunacy about the president of the United States, the nation's first African-American president -- that he is not an American citizen, not "one of us"; that he is a Muslim in league with terrorists; that he is out to subvert the Constitution of the United States. I have watched John McCain stand in front of such people and respond as if he were speaking with reasonable people.

At some point, it is incumbent on a statesman and a national hero to say, "What you have said is intolerable and, yes, un-American. And if that is how you propose to conduct our national discourse, you'll need to leave my town hall and do it elsewhere."
-snip-

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-perspec0927gopsep27,0,7538012.story

[DFW]

1. That last part is true enough, but it has already been said, albeit in more coloquial terms

"What you have said is intolerable and, yes, un-American. And if that is how you propose to conduct our national discourse, you'll need to leave my town hall and do it elsewhere."

Barney Frank said pretty much that. He just put it differently: "Arguing with you is like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it." More earthy, but pretty much that same sentiment. I don't hold it against every member of Congress that they can't spontaneously sound like Thomas Jefferson.

[Jade Fox]

2. The responses to this article in the paper...

are scary.

This seems to be the new Rightwing response to criticism of their vile behavior and ideology: "You're just as bad". Never mind that that is not true: What an sad, ugly defense.

[wndycty]

3. And that is why they will continue to lose

:kick:

[alfredo]

4. If I wanted to register, this would have been my reply

After the losses in 2004, the Democratic party looked within, fixed what needed fixing, got back to basics and two years later took control of congress. in 2008 they took the White House. What made this possible is that the Democratic Party is democratic, it allowed a real grassroots movement to take the reins when it was shown their ideas had merit.

Because the GOP is authoritarian by nature, I don't think they are able to self correct like the Democrats. They can't see their own failings (it's someone else's fault). With a 21% of the population willing to identify themselves as Republican, they have a huge task ahead, not just to regain power, but to survive as a national party.

[struggle4progress]

5. Wycliff's a bit of a slow learner: the Republican Party decided forty years ago

to try to snatch up the Southern racists as a voting bloc. From Reconstruction until Johnson rammed through the Civil Rights Act, the South had a solid block of racist Democrats (the so-called Dixiecrats) who wouldn't vote Republican simply because Lincoln had been a Republican

The Civil Rights Act broke the solid South, and Nixon set out to snatch up the Southern racist bloc in 1968. Nixon's strategy worked well, and it became standard Republican fare. Twelve years later, Reagan started his own Presidential run with a big racist dog-whistle: he went down to Philadelphia, Mississippi (where the KKK had infamously murdered three civil rights workers in 1964) and blathered about "state's rights" -- well-understood code for "segregation"

By the time W became President, the Republicans depended in an essential way upon a base coalition of mixed nuts, including racists, anti-immigrants, dominionists, and other extremists -- and for a few years, they were able to make up continuing losses in the center by recruiting from the further fringes. The outcome, of course, was entirely predictable: it became undeniably obvious during McCain's campaign: a visible number of his base were certifiable wackos -- an unavoidable consequence of the fact that the Republicans had been promising wackos a seat at table for four decades