If ya can't sling the hash ya gotta sell the diner.

[saltpoint]

The GOP is having a lot of trouble, almost all of it self-inflicted.

Voters want Democrats in charge of the economy and other domestic issues. Obama is getting deservedly high marks in foreign policy as well. If the GOP has a basis for objection to Democratic / Obama administration management of these traditional areas of concern, they are yet to offer it, notwithstanding throwing tea into area rivers and lakes because loud-mouth psychotics like Glenn Beck told them to.

You can't sustain a public entity that relies on lunatics bent on subverting the public.

The Republicans betrayed Lincoln. They walked out on him. They became a party that didn't care about day-to-day human concerns. Their "vision" is not sustainable. It's noisy. It's obnoxious. It's attention-seeking. And it's subversive, and even swing voters in North Carolina and Indiana knew it by November and they cast more votes for the blue team than they did for the red team.

And the momentum favors further shrinking of the Republican Party correspondent to the dramatic shrinking in the rationale for its existence. The GOP hops in bed with corporations that ship people's jobs overseas. They play footsie with the fundie nutbags on "social values" issues and ignore actual human needs like education and health care. When they are not entirely ignoring heart-and-mind issues like education and health care, they are actively planning to gut both.

They bray that government is the enemy, forgetting Lincoln's own admonition that we ARE the government.

Somebody's got to lead the flock. The GOP has nobody to do that. Gingrich and Romney are willful and manipulative. Romney has some serious money but no integrity. Gingrich has even less integrity than Romney. Palin is a rightwing dessert cart. Try to imagine her on a debate stage with Barack Obama. Jindal is marginal at best. Paul Ryan may have some regional appeal in Wisconsin but there's no point in discussing him as a national candidate at least until he reaches puberty. Huckabee is the one lone half-way personable candidate they could offer, and he did enjoy some success in the GOP primary in the 08 cycle, but keep in mind that he was unable to outperform as hapless a fool as John McCain.

Obama remains strong. Democratic registration is way up. The Pukes are outnumbered and their "leaders" are all fools.

They'll need to either re-group and start small or disband. No matter how ya serve that hash, there ain't nobody stoppin' in for chow.

[Telly Savalas]

1. We'll see how it goes.

The GOP probably isn't going to change its approach before the midterm elections. If they lose enough ground in 2010 that it becomes obvious that their strategy is ineffective, then there will probably be forces in the party which will work to restore some sanity. If this happens, this faction's contender for 2012 will probably be someone very few of us had heard of.

[saltpoint]

2. That could be exactly how they try to handle it. Their brand name

is not doing very well right now in the public marketplace.

And culturally, they still know how to squawk mighty loud but they've been unable to reverse progressive trends in the national landscape.

I'm all for whompin' 'em good in the 2010 elections. It would more quickly force them into reassessment.

[BlooInBloo]

3. mmmm..... hash.....

[saltpoint]

5. Hey there you.

:hi:

[grantcart]

4. without a clear leader the historical response of the GOP is to go into an

all out civil war for control of the party, based in part in the belief that if they are properly purified they will be restored to power.

[saltpoint]

6. Hi, grantcart. Agreed. We'll hear more and more talk of Republicans

getting back to their base, or root, or principled origin, by which I guess they mean Ronald Reagan and not Lincoln.

This is a mixed up bunch these days. It may take an intervention by Dr. Phil!

[CTyankee]

7. You realize that you are dating yourself, don't you?

But since I got it, I'm dating myself too!

Reminds me when my ex-husband used to threaten our son with being doomed to "slinging hash in a diner" if he didn't get better grades. My son was mystified with the idiom and so, of course, didn't know what old dad was talking about.

P.S. Son graduated from Columbia University and went on to Brooklyn Law. He is now a Senior Prosecutor in the Brooklyn DA's office. Presumably, hash slinging is not in his job description!:rofl:

[saltpoint]

8. It sounds to me like your son is slinging some serious hash indeed.

And a big thumbs up to his parents.

Come to think of it, "slinging the hash" sounds for all the world like a food fight.

:hi:

[CTyankee]

9. Yep. He deals with some mean dudes...nt