Thoughts on when the GOP "Jumped the Shark"

[LeftHander]

I believe that the GOP "Jumped the Shark" and provided a glimpse of the dysfunction of the party during the 2006 election cycle when they tried to extend anti-gay measures in congress.

Below is a essay I wrote on it back in 2006.

http://wherearetheweapons.blogspot.com/search?q=Jumped+the+Shark

Share your GOP "Jump the Shark Moment" (another I believe is the Shaivo debacle. That really turned a lot of moderate Republicans off and made social and religious conservative Republicans appear rather "creepy" to the general public.

On edit: One thing I think we need to remember is that the GOP is still there and still making people's lives miserable and are the source of FUD on numerous issues facing us today.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. When they nominated Reagan

[guitar man]

3. +100!!

:thumbsup:

[Initech]

17. Or more accurately when they gave Reagan unofficial sainthood.

Really if that treasonous bastard is the benchmark of greatest presidents of all time then we are truly fucked as a country.

[YOY]

2. Dunno about that but the beginning of the end was and always will be Colbert's WH Press Speech.

To me at least. That's when it "felt" like things were turning around to me.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879

The man's balls are legendary.

[peace frog]

4. When they tried and failed to oust FDR

via staging a coup, but were busted by General Smedley Butler. http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/about/FDRcoup.html

[lame54]

5. Katrina reaction...

or non-reaction

[LeftHander]

7. I think that was a GW Bush personal JTS...

good one...

[lame54]

10. but since then they have been rudderless

[WI_DEM]

6. After TR?

[johnaries]

12. that was my first thought - when they forced Teddy out of the party.

[NRaleighLiberal]

8. Watergate...then Reagan.

[dmallind]

9. Vietnam

Really - the collegiate and bipartisan approach possible (or at least on the surface ostensibly possible) prior to Vietnam never really came back. The right's ill-conceled dehumanization of their political opposition started then. Reagan communicated it best and Rove leveraged it best for a while at least, but it started during Vietnam.

[Starry Messenger]

11. Dan Quayle.

It showed a lot of weakness and undercut the Republican "brand" at the time of being the party of sober-headed and practical intellectuals. The GOP tried to recreate a "Reagan" by pairing Bush 1 with a good looking guy like Quayle who had all of the moral and intellectual depth of Britney Spears. I think a lot of people started to wake up and smell the coffee around then.

I'm generalizing from my family's experience though. Quayle turned my Mom from a Republican to a Democrat. :)

[valerief]

13. They ARE the shark. nt

[Laelth]

19. Hear, hear. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[11 Bravo]

14. I immediately thought of Terri Schiavo.

[Fumesucker]

15. In order to jump the shark you must have once been cool..

Fonzie was cool once and lost that cool when he jumped the shark.

The GOP has never been cool, hence they never jumped the shark.

[LeftHander]

16. Maybe "Jump the couch."....??nt

[LostInAnomie]

18. The obvious ones would be the lead up to the Iraq War and Katrina.

Those were points of no return for a lot of people that had shaky support of the Republican party.

For me though, Terri Schaivo is the most obvious example. It is the most glaring exampe of the Republican party's depravity. Using a family's tragedy as a means to pander to the most disgusting of their base on a national stage.

It also gave the nation and the world a vision of what "the base" actually looks like:

[Sebastian Doyle]

20. When they let the Bush Crime Family take over the party

Which was with the Eisenhower/Nixon administration.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

21. Depends on what exactly you mean

If you're asking about when the whole party in general was a positive force for good in our country then, aside from a few notable leaders (i.e. Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Eisenhower?), then, really, the whole foundation of the GOP, at least the modern incarnation of it anyway, never had a "shark to jump" in the first place. The GOP's only major function in our country to date seems to be obsessively representing the interests of the uber-wealthy, the elite, and corporations against the interests of middle- and working-class and, more importantly, blocking any kind of significant reforms that enhance the health, safety, and overall well-being of everybody but themselves and their constituencies. They have been- until lately- frighteningly successful in getting a majority of people divided (i.e. through the exploitation of social, religious, and/or cultural issues) and/or distracted enough to obtain and maintain significant governmental and social power to advance their agenda.

If you're asking about when, in recent history, they began to lose their political viability (at least for now), I'd say that it was Bush's invasion/occupation of Iraq in 2003 or, more specifically, Bush's failure to find any WMD in Iraq despite him and his (mis-)administration's efforts to scare us into launching a "war of choice", not to mention his and Cheney's constantly blustering about the UN's incompetence and "failure" to locate any WMD themselves during their internationally sanctioned inspection tours, that started the avalanche that practically buried them last year.
Up until that point- following 9/11- Bush had been seemingly invincible and commanded high approval ratings but he only barely managed to win re-(s)election in 2004. I believe that it was definitely his debacle in Iraq that produced the first major "chink" in the GOP majority's political "armor" and had the Democrats worked a little harder in 2004, Bush may actually not have won a second term. But, of course, he did. However, between the failure to locate any WMD and the slow but steady drip of information suggesting that Bush et. al had been trying to "fix" the facts around the policy of invading/occupying Iraq and ignoring the more nuanced reports the CIA was REALLY providing to him about Iraq's actual ability to threaten us, more and more people finally began to realize that the GOP may not quite be the honest and capable party they (still) portray themselves to be, a suspicion that continued to be reaffirmed time and time again during Bush's second term when Bush/GOP tried to scare us into privatizing Social Security, tried to use federal and judicial power to prevent a private citizen from making personal medical decisions about a family member's medical condition, and failed miserably to help provide emergency assistance to an entire city faced with an environmental catastrophe. The wave of disgraced officials and party members didn't help things for them either during the run up to the 2006 elections.

[Beer Snob-50]

22. While I have rarely agreed with them

they really jumped the shark with the whole "Freedom Fries" thing. It really made them seem like really small, petty, not very intelligent people!

and then terry schiavo (sp) put them over the edge.