The Republican Party is in flames and it's raining gasoline. - Page 2

Things must be worse than I thought. Moe is the only winger even bothering to defend his party, and even that may be some kind of obscure performance art.

My memory is that there was a "sense" that things were going to favor Republicans, without much hard data that they were going to make huge gains. The whole thing was a little subterranean.

That's one of the reasons I think the fall elections keeps getting more interesting: the "sense" was already there, and this series of Republican set backs are pile-on from there. '94 had nothing like the specific headlines that we are seeing now.

I can't help but think this stuff is just death on getting your base to show-up; there's a palpable feeling, unlike '00 and '04, that it's just not "fun" to be a Bush supporter anymore. By that I mean that the Republicans, especially after 9/11, had created an incredibly polarized environment that gave a lot of people the satisfaction of being part of an "angry mob", shouting down dissent and ready to route the enemy within, ala the whole burning Dixie Chick CDs thing.

Now, it's like the morning after a drunken spree. Sure, there are a lot of resentful people still around, but the mob has largely broken up and it's just not as cool to stand around shouting "liberal traitors must die" when you're not surrounded by thousands of other and carrying torches. The constant reminders that the guys with the bullhorns that were egging you on are corrupt or incompetent or creepy really doesn't help get the old gang back together again for one last hurrah.

The idea that Cheney is "pro-gay", or an exemplar of some kind of Republican big tent, is silly. He may not be actively hostile, going around making "kill the fags" speeches, but that is a very long way from anything resembling "pro-gay". Do you imagine that the "party big-wigs" would be cool with Cheney taking to making speeches about how we ought to fully embrace homosexuality as normal and unthreatening and not a biblical sin at all but just another way of being human? Because that's "pro-gay".


That merely suggests to me that religious conservatives are willing to put their morals in their hip pocket as long as it means they can continue to have access to power, which has less to do with "tolerance" than a cynical determination to do whatever is necessary. If you oppose the war it ought to be for reasons significant enough that you don't put them aside in the interests of winning elections. At any rate, do you actually think that the Republican Party embraces "being against the war" as an acceptable position? Now that the wheels have come off there is a little bit of kvetching, but please. "Being against the war" was being "objectively pro-terrorist", remember? That's your idea of a big tent?


Again, they might disagree, but there is no sense that the national face of the Republican Party is mellow about abortion. Noting that certain individuals may hold certain views and that operatives from the party do not therefore come out and excommunicate them doesn't make ay kind of case for the broad and accepting diversity of that party.


Oh, wait, it's "activists" now? So shouldn't we be looking for pro-choice "activists" that are embraced by the Republicans? At any rate, there are quite a few Democratic candidates in this very election cycle that hold divergent views from the official national part position. They're running in very conservative districts and reflect the realities of where they are. Haven't noticed anyone form Dean's office coming out to shut them down. And please don't start up about Lieberman. The guy had drifted from the views of his electorate, so they dumped him. That's not intolerance, it's democracy, and precisely the same thing happened with a couple of Republicans who were insufficiently conservative, and, I might add they were ousted with a lot more coordination and support from the national part than what happened in Connecticut.


This is simply a bullshit right wing canard, whether you know it or not. Democratic "big wigs" tolerate all kinds of stuff. In fact, the problem with the party recently is that hey have "tolerated" far too much, becoming little more than "Republicans light". They'll do far better this cycle by sharply differentiating themselves from the failed and corrupt Republican Party.

National parties win elections by being clear about what they stand for and sticking to principles. Certainly you would have to be blind or stupid to claim that the Republican Party has built its recent electoral successes on being "inclusive"-- they've done it by being savagely partisan and energizing the "base", which has precisely zero interest in making nice with the heathens. The reason they are in trouble now is that they have fucked up horribly, beyond their power to spin it away.


Obama is pleasant and vaguely inspirational, until it means he has to take a hard stand. Where was he on torture, if he is so guided by religious principle? And the whole "the Dems must cease their hostility to religions" thing is absolute 100% bullshit. Show me one, a single instance of a national Democratic figure saying anything that could be construed as "hostile to faith". Resisting a powerfully organized, politically active Christian right is to resist the right, not "christianity", and anybody who's being honest can see this. The christian right has very systematically promulgated the idea that to resist their specific, partisan, institutional goals is to be "against religion". When Obama provides cover for this nonsense it makes him pretty much an opportunistic dick, in my book.

That's not "getting it", that's trying not to burn any bridges while still a neophyte and people are telling you you could be president some day.