The real problem with the American right: Aging, white radicals
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2014 07:44 AM EST
The real problem with the American right: Aging, white radicals
Everyone knows the GOP has been unable to moderate its image or agenda. But less understood is the true reason why
Brian Beutler
Rand and Ron Paul (Credit: Reuters/Jim Young)
The Republican Party’s total failure to make even cosmetic changes to its image and policy agenda last year has at this point become the kind of cliché-cum-running joke that often attaches itself to accepted truisms in American politics. Like chuckling about Bill Clinton’s inability to contain himself in the company of women, or noting that Dick Cheney actually ran the show during George W. Bush’s first term, observing that Republicans have failed to moderate or reinvent themselves after losing badly in 2012 is the kind of thing even sympathetic political wise men can say to signal that they get it. That in what was a tough year for President Obama, Republicans screwed up too.
But the observation of these symptoms is less crucial than the diagnosis. Why are Republicans so stuck?
When it became clear about a year ago that Republican leaders would have a much harder time advancing immigration reform than they realized — that GOP activists and conservatives were livid about the idea that Republicans were going to help illegal immigrants gain citizenship — it started to look like the party had an insoluble problem on its hands. Watching Republicans attempt to broaden their appeal to growing, traditionally Democratic constituencies has been like watching someone try to cover a bedroom floor with a poorly cut carpet, fastening it into one corner but pulling it out of the others in the process.
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http://www.salon.com/2014/01/22/the_real_problem_with_the_american_right_aging_white_radicals/
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