The Destruction of the Republican Party in 2008

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Over at the Alternate Brain, they discussed a post on the Regressive Antidote which posits the notion that because of the breathtaking incompetency of the Bush Administration, that the Republican Party may suffer a mortal defeat this fall.

On one hand, the implosion of the GOP and the rise of another party is overdue. Their core platform for the last sixty years has been fear-mongering of one kind or another. From the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s into various forms of race-baiting (which were reinforced when the racist Southerners left the Democratic Party after the civil and voting rights of the 1960s were enacted), to gay-bashing and xenophobia, the GOP has been the party of hate and fear. They can't claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, a look at the Federal deficit under Reagan, Bush the Elder and Bush the Dumber shows the truth of that, and that is before you get into the myriad contracting scandals of the Dorquemada Administration. The GOP claims to be the party of "small government", but they have created the most monstrous department, the Department of Reich Homeland Security, since the creation of the Department of Defense.

All the GOP has in its quiver is fear. Fear of Commies. Fear of Nigras. Fear of Beaners. Fear of Fags. Fear of Ragheads. Fear, fear, fear. This is perfectly illustrated in that "Mister 9/11 Himself" has joined the McCain campaign. (Yes, John McCain is being "helped" by an ex-presidential candidate who spent $50 million to win one delegate.)

The Republicans may only have one hope, and that is that John McCain can distance himself enough from Dubya the Inepter to show some independence. Problem there is that every time the Tsar of the Baboons opens his mouth, out comes words that are eerily similar to McCain's positions, enough so that the "John McSame" argument is reinforced.

On the House and Senate side, those Republicans running for re-election are trying to desperately distance themselves from Der Monkey Fuhrer with votes on the farm bill, votes to provide unemployment insurance, and other measures. It may be too little, too late, as most of those incumbents have a lengthy track record of unquestioning loyalty to the Bush Administration.

But please remember that a functioning democracy needs at least two strong parties. The Republicans went truly off the rails when they had control of the Congress and the White House. They did massive damage to the country, but they sowed the seeds of their own immolation by doing so. If the GOP had curbed its batshit-crazy wing and governed from the center, they might have held power for a couple of decades, until people got tired of them. But they didn't, they tried to destroy the government from within and the problem there is that a government staffed with ideologues cannot do anything right, whether it is plan a war or respond to natural disasters. The American people have this crazy notion that with all of the taxes we pay, it is not too much to ask for competence.

So it is indeed possible that the Republicans may suffer a defeat that will be the worst electoral thrashing since 1932. But if that comes to pass, there are perils for the Democrats, for the Moonbat Wing of the Democrats is no less batshit-crazy than the Wingnuts of the Republicans.

This is the harbinger issue: Gun control. As much as the mouth-breathing rabid anti-gunners like to throw up polls that pretend to hold that gun control is what the American people want, the fact is that in the last few decades, the number of states allowing concealed-carry of firearms has grown from a handful to an overwhelming majority, and all of that happened without the rivers of blood that the anti-gunners were forecasting. When the Clinton Administration rammed through the Brady Bill in 1993, the payback was a loss of Congress the following year.

(Feel free to blame Sarah Brady for the rise to power of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay.)

In order to gain power, a party must mobilize its base. In order to keep power, the base of the party has to be taken into account, but no party can hold onto power without the support of significant numbers of voters outside of the base of the party. To keep a majority, a party must govern more or less from the center, shading to the base's side on some issues, but keeping in mind that it holds power with the consent of the moderates in the electorate.

The Democrats lost sight of that in 1993, after having control of the House of Representatives for almost forty years. The Republicans lost sight of that in less than a dozen years. If the Democrats win big in the elections this Fall, they need to be frequently reminded of that if they really want to drive a stake into the GOP. Bush and his henchmen had a chance to drive the Democrats into a long-term minority position and they muffed it by Bush's signature management style of overreaching coupled with incompetence.

The Democrats need to keep in mind that they need more than their committed base to hold onto power. Otherwise they will be history, too.