Rise and [Hopefully] Fall of the GOP

As a former Republican, at times I shake my head in disbelief at what a horrible organization the Republican Party has become. It is incredibly divisive and hate-driven, increasingly dismisses the value of anyone who isn't white, straight, intellectually ignorant, evangelical Christian, and anti-minorities. Amazingly, all the while it deludes itself by claiming to be the Party of "family values" and decency. I definitely do not know what dictionary these folks are using to achieve this result based on the actual conduct of the Party's members from McCain spokesmen/women down to the rank and file types at Sarah Palin's increasingly nasty rallies which look more and more like blood lusting lynch mobs. Richard Cohen in today's Washington Post is equally appalled. Here are some highlights from today's column:

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It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Bush and now John McCain have constructed a mean, grumpy, exclusive, narrow-minded and altogether retrograde Republican Party. It has the sharp scent of the old Barry Goldwater GOP -- the angry one of 1964 and not the one perfumed by nostalgia -- that is home, by design or mere dumb luck, to those who think that Obama is "The Madrassian Candidate."

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[T]he GOP, under Rove and his disciples in the McCain campaign, has not only driven out ethnic and racial minorities but a vast bloc of voters who, quite bluntly, want nothing to do with Sarah Palin. For moderates everywhere, she remains the single best reason to vote against McCain. But the GOP's tropism toward its furiously angry base, its tolerance and currying of anti-immigrant sentiment, its flattering of the ignorant on matters of undisputed scientific consensus -- evolution, for instance -- and, from the mouth of Palin, its celebration of drab provincialism, have sharpened the division between red and blue. Red is the color of yesterday.

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I know, the blues are not all virtuous. . . . . Still, a Democrat can remain a Democrat -- or at least vote as one -- without compromising basic intellectual or cultural values. That, though, is not what Colin Powell was saying Sunday about his own party.

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In the end, [Colin] Powell was determined not to be one of the GOP's useful idiots. Those moderates willing to overlook the choice of Palin, those capable of staying in a party where, soon enough, she could be an important or dominant force, retain the intellectual nimbleness that enabled them to persist in championing a war fought for duplicitous reasons and extol cultural values they do not for a minute share. Powell walked away from that, and others will follow -- the second time that a senator from Arizona has led the GOP into the political wilderness.