The Death of the GOP

As I have noted many times, the GOP of even a decade and a half ago bears little resemblance to the largely religious fanatic controlled part of today. Two recent columns highlight the difference from yesterday's Republican Party to the Christianist party of today. The first is a piece by retired Virginia GOP Congressman Tom Davis (pictured at left), a moderate Republican who no longer has a home in the party of Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and like minded Kool-Aid drinkers. The second is a piece by Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard which in delusional heaps praise on that war criminal otherwise known as George W. Bush, a/k/a the Chimperator. First, some highlights from Tom Davis who maintains that the GOP needs to return to moderation and jettison the far right positions that are causing the party to lose at the polls:

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Republicans must be wondering: Can it get any worse? As late as 2006, we held the White House and a majority in both houses of Congress. Come January, all three will be in Democratic hands – with a near-filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. . . . But let’s not kid ourselves, our party is broken.

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[W]e indulged in more trivial pursuits – and this led to trouble. We talked to ourselves and not to voters. We became more concerned with stem cell policy than economic policy, and with prayer in schools rather than balance in our public budgets and priorities. Not so long ago, it was easy to paint the Democrats as the party of extremists. Now, they say we’re extremists, and voters agree.

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Our candidates are safe in a swath that extends from North Texas across to North Alabama and up through Appalachia. Elsewhere, we are on the run. Almost every voter who can be convinced – who sometimes votes Democratic, sometimes Republican – now votes Democratic.

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We’ve long-since given up on the African-American vote. We’re forfeiting the Hispanic vote with unwarranted and unsavory vitriol against immigrants. Youth vote? Gone. We ask for nothing from these idealistic voters, we offer little except chastisement of their lifestyle choices and denial of global warming, and we are woefully behind the Democrats in learning how to connect with them. Soccer moms? They’re not comfortable with much of our social policy agenda, so many are gone as well.

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So what do we do? First, we eliminate checklists and litmus tests and focus on broad principles, not heavy-handed prescriptions. . . . . Second, remind ourselves the first principle of conservatism is not tax cuts or free trade or even smaller government. It is prudence, and prudence should be our guide. Prudence dictates we take seriously the concerns of those who elect us. . .

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But we won’t get there by waiting for the Democrats to fumble the ball. We won’t get there by trying to divine what Ronald Reagan would do in any given situation. We can get there, though, if we stop the infighting and show we have a better way. The party with the best, freshest ideas always wins. That can be us – that needs to be us – once again.

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In contrast to Davis is Fred Barnes who thinks things were pretty wonderful under the Chimperator and who believes that history will look on the Chimperator kindly (what drugs is he on?) Moreover, Barnes believes that torture and violations of the Geneva Conventions is just fine. Here are some highlights from Barnes' lunacy:

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The postmortems on the presidency of George W. Bush are all wrong. The liberal line is that Bush dangerously weakened America's position in the world and rushed to the aid of the rich and powerful as income inequality worsened.

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Bush had ten great achievements (and maybe more) in his eight years in the White House, starting with his decision in 2001 to jettison the Kyoto global warming treaty so loved by Al Gore, the environmental lobby, elite opinion, and Europeans.

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Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. . . . Bush's third achievement was the rebuilding of presidential authority, badly degraded in the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and Bill Clinton.

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Then there were John Roberts and Sam Alito. In putting them on the Supreme Court and naming Roberts chief justice, Bush achieved what had eluded Richard Nixon, Reagan, and his own father. Roberts and Alito made the Court indisputably more conservative. And the good news is Roberts, 53, and Alito, 58, should be justices for decades to come.

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I sincerely hope that the GOP base ignores Davis and continues down the path to oblivion urged by Barnes and those like him. Only in continued utter defeat lies the chance that at some point to Christianists will be thrown from the party or - perhaps better yet - a new party will arise so that the GOP goes the way of the Whigs.