The Death G.O.P.

The Grand Old Party is on its death bed, since the election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Moderated Republicans in his Cabinet. Also with the recent comments by Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney to remove the Collen Powell type of republicans out of the party. Therefore, this means the GOP no longer has room for moderates, and, with this sudden turnabout, Congress will have no room for ideological filibusters -- for those who preach the doctrine of I, me and mine. Self-interest will no longer be deemed a virtue, and society's needs will no longer be the laughing stock of political meetings. I also see that the republican party is shrinking into a Southern redoubt as a marginalized, regional party. This is true, but something much more interesting is going on here. We are watching a major national political party disappear from the American scene. The Republicans are in their Cheshire Cat phase – all that is left to see are the inane grins of politicians who have lost all connection to the real world. They wear the rictus of a doomed and dying political force that is paying the price for decades of hypocrisy and deceit. They have peddled the elixir of deception for so long that they have begun to drink heavily from their own product, and now it is too late. There are barely any Republican politicians on the national scene who are not irrevocably disconnected from reality. This has been a long time in coming. It might have begun during the 20 years of exile when Roosevelt and Truman held the White House, and the Republicans had nothing to offer the American people. They discovered they could engineer a comeback by selling fear – fear of the Commies and the Red Menace. Fear brought votes and power, and it helped even more if you could generate fear of internal enemies. Republicans have retreated to the 1990s and the glorified days of Reagan in the 1980s. They have stepped up the class and racial warfare to levels so absurd and unbelievable that no one is paying attention to them. Calling Obama a Magic Negro or a socialist or a Communist doesn’t frighten the public because the words are meaningless, and Americans have learned what real fright is having lived through eight years of the Bush administration. Worse still, it is not just Republicanism which is now branded a total failure, it is conservatism itself which has failed. Democrats may or may not identify themselves as liberals, but almost all Republicans identify themselves as conservatives. This might be why they are left holding nothing but delusions; if they looked deeply into their soul they would see nothing there to offer. Limited government, deregulation of markets, corporate welfare, a refusal to tax so as to balance a budget, and an unbridled defense establishment are what conservatism has offered. The failure has been monumental and quite likely brought to an end the position of the United States as the world’s sole great power. These are forces for potential disruption and even danger to America. They need to be brought back into the body politic, given a voice, but like everyone else they should be expected to operate in the real world where compromises are required and where we all can agree on what is up and what is down. Under the best of circumstances, this new political party will offer ideas and policies that counterbalance those of the Democrats, and at some point its candidates will be rewarded national office once voters can trust in their competence and sanity. This new political party might be called Republican, though the odds from a marketing standpoint are against that, but every American will be able to sigh with relief that is completely unlike today’s Republican Party in every way possible.