How Republican Party Became A Failed State-They Let Its Extremist Insurgency In Through Front Door

[kpete]

How the Republican Party Became a Failed State
The GOP let its extremist insurgency in through the front door.

........

....for all of our faults and challenges, the Democratic Party is a functioning institution. Our leaders in Congress command a high degree of respect and loyalty among Democrats in the House and Senate. Our primary is a contest between a candidate of the center-left and the far-left who have both showered praise on the leader they’re vying to succeed. And though Barack Obama has had his share of mistakes and disappointments, he has also quietly and steadily become one of the party’s most beloved and consequential presidents of all time. If Obama could run for a third term against any candidate we’ve seen, he would easily win.


The Republican Party, on the other hand, is no longer a functioning institution. It is a failed state, overrun by a nihilistic insurgency that is about to depose the establishment conservatives who let them in through the front door. It is a party that cannot govern itself, let alone the rest of the country.

In Washington, there is much pearl-clutching and think-piecing about how the storied party of Lincoln and Reagan could have possibly been hijacked by the likes of Donald Trump and former Zodiac Killer Ted Cruz—as if, until this campaign, the Republican Party had been humming along smoothly as a big tent full of cheery capitalists enthused about freedom; as if we didn’t know about the crazies they hide in the attic between elections.

But of course, we did know. Many of us have seen this chaos coming for quite some time.

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yep, MORE:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/13/how-the-republican-party-became-a-failed-state.html

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. They iied the crazies to their apron strings

Because the could be headed to the voting both with simple aeguments of fear, nationalism, and hate.

Now, the crazies are strangling them with those apron strings.

[Wounded Bear]

2. K & R ......for visibility..

Good read.

[Hortensis]

3. Today's GOP reflects today's corruption of conservatism.

Before the 1980s, both mainstream conservatives and mainstream liberals stood between extreme laissez-faire and libertarian economic advocates and unrestricted pursuit of profits.

We know in general terms how they attacked liberals, redefining us as promoters of a dysfunctional, immoral and even evil ideology that threatened the survival of America. And persuading conservatives we must be stopped.

But they also set out to destroy opposition among conservatives themselves by changing the very idea of what conservatism was. Using vast sums of money, they infiltrated legal and economic ideas that were once extreme and even ridiculous into the American psyche through our universities, charitable foundations, news media, legal systems, churches, and eventually social media.

For decades now, these enormous investments have established schools under misleading names into universities across the nation, starting with the Ivy League as by far the most important to subvert. They have been teaching economics promoting the dysfunction of government regulation and the virtues, of "free-market" capitalism, that giant sucking sound, and stable, healthy, tiered economic classes to people who then went to work at all levels of business and government.

They taught a whole generation of attorneys new legal foundations for the religious rights of corporations and use of money as free speech. Many of those people clerked and are clerking at state and federal district, appellate and supreme court levels. They hold judgeships. And more are being graduated every year. I believe (?) UCLA alone called out what was happening and said no.

Today, traditional conservatism has been suppressed as a political force, its sensible, moderating influence, replaced by ultraconservative views among the social, economic, and religious wings of the right. Moderate conservatives have been almost entirely purged (yes, that word used for the anti-democratic reality that it is) from state and federal elective offices and replaced with extremists, or in some cases just corrupt, cynical operators willing to play extremist for their funders.

And, of course, we see this season's GOP presidential lineup, every one hard-right to extremist, including Kaisich, by all older standards. Christie never really had a chance -- he was the most moderate of the group, highly corruptible -- but he's not a True Believer in the dismantling of government. He hugged Obama, and these days most of the ultraconservatives pulling the strings are every bit as batshit-crazy as the people they want to put in office.

[Hydra]

4. The Republican party should have been allowed to quietly die in 2007-2009

President Obama's efforts to make them relevant again backfired horribly, probably even by his measure. I think the well off among the Right believed the sham could go on forever, that they could screw their base economically as long as they gave their people sacrifices now and then to slake their bloodlust.

Now the ghouls are out of their crypts and looking for targets.

[Hortensis]

5. Getting rid of the GOP is not in our power.

Half this nation is conservative and has no intention of just turning control over to us, by "dying" ideologically or any other way. And that's as it should be. This is a democracy -- government of, by, and for the people. Remember? A major defining characteristic of extremists is a dangerous lack of respect for the beliefs and wishes of others.

Conservatism in America will fix itself when enough of them have become fed up to make it happen. I do suspect we could "help" the good ones wrest control of their party back from the bad ones by winning big across the nation this time around.

And, btw, Obama's election was a disaster for the plutocrat class. He wiped out 30 years of tax breaks for the wealthiest in our country. Much needs to be done, but we won't win through ignorance of what we have accomplished and what we can.

[Hydra]

6. I'll be holding my breath

The "good" conservatives around here are very religious and horrified about things like SSM being legal, businesses getting taxed and not digging up more coal. We're oil and water to even the best of them.

And half the nation isn't conservative- more like 1/3. Remember that 50% of people don't vote, and there is no viable party for the Left. That 1/3 has sat on the dialogue for 35 years and done untold damage in the process. We had a chance to turn the page in 2008. We'll have to try again now.

[Hortensis]

7. No, if anything slightly more than half are conservative.

Don't be fooled by labels. We are born with conservative and liberal orientations hard wired into us genetically, strongly influenced and muddled by environment but never erased.

Conservatives, to various degrees, are comfortable with inequality, with haves and have-nots. They see it as natural and inevitable, and even right. Liberty pings with them, but that all men are created equal does not.

Conservatives, to various degrees, are most comfortable with conformity and uncomfortable with diversity. Of ideas, car colors, furniture styles, and religions.

Conservatives, to various degrees, have a knee-jerk dislike of change, a bad handicap to function in an age of galloping change.

Conservatives have a naturally dark view of humanity and higher levels of anxiety over perceived threats, and, to various degrees, they believe we cannot prosper without a strong moral governmental structure protecting us from ourselves and others and forcing us into compliance. The very idea that the people have an absolute right to tell their government what it can and can't do dismays them at a gut level.

And, once again, probably over half of all Americans are more conservative than liberal. Religion is a weight on that scale. And right now, on average they are more strongly conservative by far than their grandparents were.