But rarely, also, have I seen the dilemmas of a political party condensed so nicely into the form of two individuals. What does it say about your party when a regressive like John McCain goes out of his way to whore himself into becoming even more regressive – abortion, immigration, torture, you name it – and still winds up despised and ignored by the party faithful for his unacceptably Milquetoast tendencies? What does it say when a buffoon like Sarah Palin, a would-be Il Duce in a skirt – only even more comical – can say and do and be anything idiotic and cringe-worthy, and column after column of the loyal troops will still adore her, perhaps even more so, marching off to war in her name? What it says to me is that this party is going nowhere ideologically.
And, therefore, that it is going nowhere politically. Except perhaps south. Figuratively, for sure, probably literally as well. This is not a party that is going to allow itself to modify its positions on abortion policy, guns, gays, economics, stem-cell research, foreign policy, immigration or any of a hundred other passionately-held ultra-regressive issue stances. The Tim Pawlentys of the world can try all they want (and I doubt they’ll even do that), but this is a rock that will not be moved. Except possibly further to the right. The folks who own the party now – the result of a Faustian bargain made between the kleptocrats and religious kooks – are not going to let go of it. I guarantee you they’d rather stay pure on their issues and see the party die than make any compromises for electability. If there is going to be any movement whatsoever, it will reflect members’ belief that the party needs to become even more regressive, even more repressive, even more medieval. These people want more Terri Schiavo, not less, more Matthew Shepard, not less, more Elian Gonzalez, not less, more Kenneth Starr, not less, more Charlton Heston, not less, more Antonin Scalia, not less, more Iraqs, not less, and more Enrons, not less.
Which is great news for the world, since even in way-backward America, that stuff is already no longer selling – in a big way. What could be better than the belief among the faithful that they are losing elections because they are not regressive enough, rather than the truth – which they probably actually perceive, but are too frightened to face – that just the opposite is the case? Imagine you were on a sinking ship and decided that it might be a good idea to bail water... into the boat. Imagine your house was on fire and you thought the best solution to your crisis was to douse the flames with... gasoline, not water. For once in my life, I couldn’t possibly agree more with the radical right about what they should do next.
And following this path, it won’t take them long to slip into a political coma, either. I mean, how many gang-bangs, knee-cappings and drive-by shootings in a row can you endure before your pulse finally throws in the towel just stops showing up for work? Going to the electorate with a "Bring back the good old days of the Bush era" message is absolutely my idea of what the GOP should do in 2010 and 2012. Oh, god, please. I just can’t believe it happens also to be theirs as well. Maybe they’re right, after all, and there is a god. How else can you account for them doing the dirty work of eradication and garbage collection for us? For evil taking itself out?
If they only knew. You practically have to get as creative as Salvador Dali, and twice as twisted, to invent some obscure demographic category in which the GOP is not slipping badly, even as we speak. (And this, despite that their opposition, the Democratic Party, is about as exciting as last week’s leftover Malt-O-Meal.) How about over-sixty white male born-again church-attending evangelical pickup-driving Merle Haggard-listening NRA-member deer-hunters with less than a high school education living in Appalachia? I’m pretty sure the Republican Party still rocks with them crackers. Otherwise, though, it’s a helluva stampede going in the other direction. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Catholics, suburbanites, the West, the Midwest, New England, the Mountain states, men, women, the middle class, the working class, the wealthy, young people, middle-aged people, high school grads, college grads, postgrads, moderates, new voters – all these folks are abandoning the GOP with a vengeance. Hard to imagine why, too – what with two endless and botched wars, one drowned city, a doubling of the national debt, torture, Constitution-shredding, international loathing, exacerbation of global warming, skyrocketing energy costs, shrinking paychecks, healthcare disarray, and now a depression that would warm Herbert Hoover’s cockles. As if that isn’t a record to be proud of! Oh well. People can be so fussy sometimes in their political expectations.
So what happens now, given that the only two directions available to the GOP are down and to the right? My guess is that they marginalize themselves into a regional party, playing well for national elections in the Bible Belt, and that’s about it. That’s a grim path to go down, to be sure. The few remaining moderates of the party will not look forward to suffering the same fate as Lincoln Chaffee and Chris Shays, two members of Congress well-liked at home, but not well enough to get past the (R) after their names on the ballot. Rather than be handed a pink slip by voters, they’ll start defecting, further isolating the extremists within the GOP, and further solidifying their control of the sinking party. The situation could remain like this, with the Democrats dominating nationally and the Republicans winning only the South in presidential elections, decreasingly attracting candidates for down-ticket positions anywhere else, and decreasingly attracting voter registrations, a process which has already begun in a wholesale fashion among 18-29 year-old voters.
But such a scenario also opens up a substantial political vacuum, particularly as the Democrats are likely to inch themselves a bit back to the left, at least in Congress. This condition would practically scream out for a new political party to rise up on the center-right and become what the Republicans once were, before the Reagan-Bush hijacking. And if that happens, it could be only a matter of a few election cycles before – losses leading to defections, leading to more loss and more defections – the Grand Old Party becomes the Gloriously Extinct Party, one that you can only see in museums anymore, right next to the exhibit on evolution. That may seem like a leap, but it isn’t. It isn’t so much that the Republicans are unpopular that is their problem as it is the lethal combination of being unpopular and completely resistant to any remedies to your unpopularity. The far right owns this party. They are not letting go.
And I thank them for that patriotic duty and sacrifice for America. Because, after all, what could be a better service to this country than for the regressives to neuter themselves politically, and destroy the political party that has brought to America and the world so much unspeakable damage?
Bravo, Lunatic Fringe. Bravo.
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