Not everything wrong with the Republican Party is due to "neoconservatism," which is a very specific ideological niche mostly centered around foreign policy (in practice, Utopian imperialism).
The real cancer in the Republican Party is that their Southern Strategy built around wedge, racial politics over the past four decades finally ate the Party. Today, we are looking at the early 21st Century version of the Dixiecrats. I'm not saying that they are only motivated by racism, but they have become the party of anti-ideas, anti-intellectualism, anti-global thinking.
I suspect they need to take a severe beating in 2012 and probably 2016 before they start to listen to progressives in their midst. I hope that I'm wrong because a broken Republican party in a structurally bipartisan political system is likely to lead to excesses and corruption in the Democratic Party.
]]>It's kind of sad to hear the republicans saying things like, "we've been here before, in 1964, and in 1996, and we know how to rebuild our base and win..." and they inevitably invoke Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan, who stepped from the national stage 20 years ago, yet they invoke him as if he were still alive or still relevant. He is invoked by both the hard-core rumps who want Sarah as their queen and the "centrists" and neither side seems able to distill what Reagan has to say to them today.
If Reagan symbolized one thing for Reps that they seem unable to remember, it was optimism and hope. The candidate of optimism and hope in this election was not John McCain.
The Palinists don't care how uninformed or incurious she has proven to be. They don't care if she knows that Africa is not a country, any more than they care to distinguish between "Arab" as a linguistic or racial identity and "Muslim" as a religion. That's why their narrative on Obama was always base and racist--his father was from Africa and a Muslim and Barack therefore was Arab and therefore a terrorist.
I don't know where the country is going economically--probably a pretty bad recession for the next 18 or 24 months. We need to take full advantage of this victory, struggle through the hard times and focus on unity. In other words, let's not behave like typical Democrats. Let the Republicans become the party of bitter internal division and bloodletting. If we fail, we open the door for the Palinists in 2012, and the 2010s could look a lot like the 1930s.
]]>End of Bushism. Now be ready to crush Palinism.
]]>John Steward just said "President Barack Obama"
]]>We Marylanders can finally stop looking south and shaking our heads.
]]>77% and not closing.
About 6,200 votes @ 9:50 pm
]]>M: 49.52
O: 49.41
3,000 votes, was 100k+ for McCain an hour ago.
]]>McCain: 50.76%
Obama: 48.17%
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&scoring=n&q=Dixville+Notch&btnG=Search
]]>Obama: 17
McCain: 10
Paul: 2
I think you can count on it, per Paul Krugman's NYT column today:
If the reps lose on the scale projected in polls, they will retrench around "core values" and follow their queen. The Repubs need a while in the wilderness--and national repudiation for two or more cycles--to reform, or die.
Kind of amusing (in a tragicomedic way) that the Republican party "Southern Strategy" ended up eating the party.
The main thing that the nutroots don't seem to understand is that their ability to determine to future of the party is trumped by Rove and the money boys. Uncle Karl is never about values--he's an admitted atheist who plays the fundies like a violin. The rump repubs don't yet understand--it isn't their party.
]]>