Requiem for the Right?

While Obama and the Congressional Democrats have shown an incredible ineptitude over the last eight months and may well have botched meaningful healthcare reform, the Republicans have an even larger problem on their hands, namely the take over of the GOP base by elements that can only be described as the lunatic fringe. A new story in Newsweek looks at the problem within the GOP which has been overlooked lately due to the Obama administration's delusion quest for bipartisanship. As a former Republican myself, the GOP's ongoing intellectual suicide is unnerving. Increasingly it seems that all rational elements of the Party have defected thereby leaving only the nutcases in the party - together with corrupt GOP elected officials who are willing to prostitute themselves shamelessly in their quest to remain in office. It is indeed a sickening spectacle. Here are some article highlights:

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So how bad is it, really? . . . Quite bad if you prize a mature, responsible conservatism that honors America's institutions, both governmental and societal. . . . The consensus forged by Buckley in the 1960s gained strength through two decisive acts: first, Buckley denounced right-wing extremists, such as the members of the John Birch Society, and made sure when he did it to secure the support of conservative Republicans like Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and Sen. John Tower. This pulled the movement toward the center.

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Republicans will be tagged as the party that declined even to help repair a broken system and extend fundamental protections—logical extensions of Social Security and Medicare—to some 46 million people who now don't have them. This could marginalize the right for a generation, if not longer. Rush Limbaugh's stated hope that Obama will fail seems to have become GOP doctrine. This is the attitude not of conservatives, but of radicals, who deplore the very possibility of a virtuous government.

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The function of conservatives is not to meet every liberal program or scheme with a denunciation or a destructive counterscheme, but rather to weigh its advantages and defects, supporting the first and challenging the second. A declaration of ideological warfare against liberalism is by its nature profoundly unconservative. It meets perceived radicalism with a counterradicalism of its own.

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This is the crisis now facing the right and principal reason I wrote this book. The movement has exhausted itself and depleted its resources. Before the GOP finds a new leader, it will need a new vocabulary.

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The anti-knowledge and anti-intellectual nature of today's GOP is shocking. Combined with the dominionist and far right religious extremism of the party base it is a recipe for insanity. Yes, it may play well with a delusional, paranoid minority within the nation's population, but to thinking conservatives and moderates it is down right scary.