The Molotov Party (by Frank Rich) For the new GOP, conservative isn’t nearly radical enough.

[kpete]

The Molotov Party
Frank Rich
New York Magazine
January 2012

The GOP is even undergoing a cultural revolution to match its ideological reboot. A party that has spent much of the past three decades pandering to the religious right remains adamantly opposed to reproductive rights for women and equal rights for gays. But now it routinely rationalizes and even embraces the same licentious sexual culture it once opposed with incessant anti-indecency crusades. Extramarital behavior that Republicans decried as an apocalyptic stain on the national moral fabric in the Clinton era is the new normal on the right. Just look at Iowa, long an epicenter of the family-values brigade, and the plight of Rick Santorum, a hard-line proselytizer for every religious-right cause and an ostentatious promoter of his own religious orthodoxy and procreative prowess. He has not had one even near-winning week in state polls in 2011 despite campaigning in all 99 counties among what would seem to be his natural constituency. The thrice-married philanderer Newt Gingrich, despite little presence in Iowa and an even smaller campaign outlay than Santorum’s there, effortlessly surged to the top, however transitorily, beating his nearest competitor (Paul) by nearly a two-to-one margin among white Evangelical Christians in an early December Times–CBS News poll of likely ­Republican caucusgoers.

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The panicked GOP Establishment, belatedly closing its ranks to hasten Romney’s coronation, could well get its wish. Gingrich’s capacity for self-immolation is infinite, and the only non-Romney left who could make trouble is Paul. Either way, the 25-75 split has been a lucky break for Obama. Though the White House has made a great show of saying that it regards Romney as its toughest potential opponent, that stance has always seemed disingenuous. In a time of economic woe, it’s a gift to run against a chilly venture-capital tycoon who, in Mike Huckabee’s undying characterization from the 2008 GOP primary campaign, looks like “the guy who laid you off.” If a candidate can attract only a quarter of his own party after essentially four years of campaigning, where is the groundswell going to come from next November? The thinness of that 25 percent is dramatized by the Real Clear Politics compilation of polls of Republican contenders and voters: Of 59 surveys taken since the Perry boomlet of August, Romney has only placed first in 20. A bomb-throwing non-Mitt, by contrast, would energize the 75 percent majority that whipped Mitt the other 39 times—particularly the activists who might otherwise be tempted to sit on their hands on Election Day. But fielding a radical ticket would come at the price of energizing any Democrats who also are thinking of staying home in 2012.

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http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/gop-2012-1/

[tblue37]

1. We must not get complacent, because right wing voters

so vehemently despise Obama, other races, and liberals——i.e., what it considers to be the elements of the “other” party (pun intended: the RW consdiers our side the party of the "other," in every sense of that word!)——that no matter how much they dislike Romney, they will come together to vote for him in the general.

The thing about Republican voters is that no matter who their candidate is (even McCain, whom most of them have always hated and mistrusted), they will reliably vote for the Republican party’s candidates in the general election, all up and down the ballot.

But you can’t say that about liberals or Democrats in general. Unlike those who vote Republican, those who lean left, whether a lot or a little, sometimes vote Dem, but they can’t be counted as reliable Democratic votes.