Leonard Pitts, Jr.: Republican Party has flat out lost its mind

[babylonsister]

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article159712234.html

July 05, 2017 1:39 PM
Republican Party has ‘flat out lost its mind’

BY LEONARD PITTS, JR.

snip//

A party that once provided a sober conservative counterweight to the Democrats’ more liberal impulses has flat out lost its mind, given itself over to rage, fear, schoolyard taunts and bizarre conspiracy theories. Which leaves me impatient with those who frame our political divide as if the issue were that left and right had equally abandoned the center. No fair observer can believe that.

To the contrary, it becomes more obvious every day that we are where we are because something is very wrong with the GOP. To not acknowledge and report that, apparently out of some misguided notion that doing so wouldn’t be “fair and balanced” is, in itself, deeply unfair and unbalanced. In our terror of being called biased, we in media have neutered ourselves, abandoned our watchdog function.

We end up having mannered debates over whether to call the president’s dozens of lies lies. Meantime, America’s international prestige is eroding, its government is paralyzed, its friends are worried, its enemies emboldened.

Enough. You will never find answers where you are scared to ask questions. Here’s what we should be asking:

How did the GOP get this way? And how can the right right itself?

Yes, I know some people will call those questions biased. Fine.

But I call them journalism.

[dgibby]

1. It's not a political party.

It's a cult, full of conspiracy theorists, religious fanatics, racists, bigots, gun nuts, survivalists, and right wing militia members.