Growing Lunacy in the GOP Base

There has been much conjecture as to whether or not newly elected RNC chair, Michael S. Steele (pictured at left), can lead the Republican Party back from lunacy and potentially irrelevance down the road if the party remains on its current delusional course. A recent Newsweek article looks at this precise issue. The author of that piece concludes in part as follows:

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[A] political party can only run in a different direction than the country for so long. And America was changing, not only in its demographics—which were increasingly ethnic and "minority"—but in its attitudes, which were increasingly inclusive. . . . For Americans to regain faith in the party of Lincoln will require more than cosmetic change at the top. And it is not clear that Steele represents anything more than that. . . . But even if Steele were inclined to try to reinvent the party, it's not clear the party would let him.

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Many Republicans like it pretty much the way it is. A new Rasmussen Reports survey found little appetite among Republicans for ideological moderation. . . . the problem is not just the Republican selling job. . . . It's the Republican reality. And unless Steele recognizes that and is empowered to act on that knowledge, it's hard to see how his smiling face will make much difference.

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For a glimpse of the true Republican reality, one need only look at a recent gathering in Oklahoma attend by homo-hater, Sally Kern, who was a speaker. As a former member of the GOP some years back, I am increasing shocked at just how unhinged the GOP base has become. Sadly, I believe that the Republican Party of Virginia is largely on the same page as the folks in Oklahoma - making it critical that Bob McDonnell NOT be elected governor this coming November. Here are some highlights from a Right Wing Watch piece that show just how scary the GOP has become:

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The crowd in the banquet hall at the Character Conference Center, housed in an old Holiday Inn in downtown Oklahoma City, sat packed, rapt with attention as Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, told them she’d found it: the gay agenda.

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Kern said the agenda is in a book called “After the Ball,” by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, a book named after a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan.” She recounted the bullet points of a secret public relations campaign to have gays accepted by the general public — step by step — with the final goal being not just acceptance of gays by heterosexuals, but eventual triumph of homosexuality as a superior lifestyle.

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“This theme of equality and freedom is the approach that the homosexuals are using today — totally perverting the true intention of what our Constitution meant. … The homosexuals get it — it’s a struggle between our religious freedoms and their right to do what they want to do.”

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Around the banquet hall, Kern’s speech met with applause and calls of “Amen!” from a crowd stoked in a crucible of conspiracy and intrigue. For the whole day, the “Clouds Over America” conference, run and organized by the John Birch Society, held lecture after lecture Jan. 23 and 24 dedicated to explaining their various conspiracy-laden tenets. Here’s one — that a godless secret society, the Illuminati, has been battling against the founding of the United States of America and decent citizens to live in peaceful, worshipful freedom.

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To get the full grasp of just how much these people need a mental heath care intervention, read the full story at the Oklahoma Gazette. These people are batshit crazy. Perhaps the most frightening revelation was that attendance at the event this year was up four fold from last year.