GOP Base Increasingly Losing Touch With Reality

UPDATED: Related to this post from earlier today is a new Washington Post/ABC News poll which shows that those identifying as Republican has fallen to only 21% of respondents thus illustrating just how posionous the Christianists and extremists of the far right have made the GOP brand. Here are a few highlights from the Washington Post:

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The new Washington Post/ABC news poll has all sorts of intriguing numbers in it but when you are looking for clues as to where the two parties stand politically there is only one number to remember: 21. That's the percent of people in the Post/ABC survey who identified themselves as Republicans, down from 25 percent in a late March poll and at the lowest ebb in this poll since the fall of 1983(!). In that same poll, 35 percent self-identified as Democrats and 38 percent called them Independents

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The Post poll numbers show the challenge for Republicans in stark terms. The number of people who see themselves as GOPers is on the decline even as those who remain within the party grow more and more conservative. That means that the loyal base of the party has an even larger voice in terms of the direction it heads even as more and more empirical evidence piles up that the elevation of voices like former vice president Dick Cheney does little to win over wavering Republicans or recruit Independents back to the GOP cause.

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It truly is remarkable watching as the rank and file base of the GOP base become increasingly deranged and utterly out of touch with reality. Of course, leading the way are the "social values" voters who cannot or will not grasp the concept of separation of church and state. Last night while channel surfing I came across a show on MSNBC entitled "Survivors of Jonestown" which looked at the murders and mass suicide that took place years ago now in Jim Jone's cult in Guyana. The mind set of Jones' followers was all to akin to that of today's GOP Christianist activists for whom reality has become something based on the hallucinations of their own psyches as opposed to anything based on objective reality. Politico has an article that looks at the increasing derangement of today's rank and file Republicans. The Democrats can only sit back and salivate as this faction seems Hell bent on dragging the Party yo oblivion. Here are some highlights:

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A quick tour through the week’s headlines suggests the Republican Party is beginning to come to terms with the last election and that consensus is emerging among GOP elites that the party needs to move away from discordant social issues.

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But outside Washington, the reality is very different. Rank-and-file Republicans remain, by all indications, staunchly conservative, and they appear to have no desire to moderate their views. GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party’s own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.

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There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense. . . . And it is perhaps most tangible in Iowa, where same-sex marriage will become the law this month in response to a state Supreme Court ruling. There, Republican activists and officials say the party is as resolute as ever, if not more so, on cultural issues – regardless of the soundings of some party elites.

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"I’ve never seen the grass-roots quite as motivated, concerned and angry," said Steve Scheffler, the head of the Iowa Christian Alliance and the state's RNC committeeman. The marriage issue and other traditional conservative litmus tests aren't likely to fade before the state's next presidential caucuses, either. Asked about how a presidential candidate urging the party toward the middle on cultural issues would fare, Scheffler said flatly: “They’re not gonna go anywhere.”

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The party will be shaped most clearly, however, when its presidential hopefuls begin their early state pilgrimages after the 2010 midterms. And they’re unlikely to emerge convinced that courting gay and Hispanic voters, in particular, is politically saleable within their parties.

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Personally, I believe the best thing that can happen for the country is that the Christianists destroy the GOP and in the process make themselves so radioactive that they will ultimately be shunned by anyone with a hope of winning in a general election. It will take time and no doubt be a very messy process getting to that point, but when it happens, then perhaps sanity will return to politics and the lunacy can stay confined within the church walls.