When Will the GOP Condemn Its Extremists?

What with the "birther" insanity still going full tilt - even as the parade of alleged Obama foreign birth certificates all go down in flames as forgeries as shown here and here - I admit I find some humor in the fact that the Republican Party is reaping some of the unhinged seeds it deliberately sowed in its shameless, win at all cost quest to remain in power. Sometimes it is better to lose power than to sacrifice all principal and fraternize with lunatics - a concept the GOP leadership should have contemplated before it drove most thinking and rational people from the Party. E.J. Dionne has a column that looks at the GOP's self-inflicted wounds and raises the question of when, if ever, will the true nut case within the Party be condemned? Personally, I suspect part of the dilemma now is that if the crazies are driven from the Party there will be virtually almost no one left. Here are some column highlights:

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[T]he surveys show Republicans now leading in this year's two major governor's races, in Virginia and New Jersey. There's just one problem: The country still doesn't like Republicans.

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A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last week captured the public's mixed verdict. The headlines focused on growing doubts about Obama's health-care plan and the drop in his approval rating, from 60 percent in February to 53 percent now. But the same poll found that while Democrats as a party had a net positive rating of five points (42 percent positive to 37 percent negative), the GOP faced a 13-point deficit. Only 28 percent rated the Republicans positively; 41 percent rated them negatively.

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Perhaps this has something to do with how few positive things Republicans have to say. As a result, the party is being defined by extremist voices who have faced little push-back from its leaders. The extremists include the "birthers" who, against all evidence, insist that Obama was not born in the United States and thus is ineligible to be president. These guys are so out there that party leaders and conservative commentators have started to disown them.

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Race-baiting is no longer off-limits on some of the right-wing talk shows. Fox News's Glenn Beck, for example, declared that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." . . . . Rush Limbaugh was far less subtle when her comment first surfaced. "How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration?" he asked. "By hating white people -- or even saying you do, or that they're not good or put 'em down, whatever."

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The harshness of the rhetorical salvos is feeding worries among some Republicans that the GOP is increasingly perceived as a right-wing, Southern regional party. . . . to take advantage of the opportunities that might come their way, Republicans will have to make themselves an acceptable alternative. They have not done this yet. Facing down extremism and breaking out of the party's regional enclave would be good places to start.