The World Through the Delusional Eyes of the GOP

In a column in the Washington Post that hits at points I've tried to make concerning the reality denying and untethered mindset of today's GOP, E.J. Dionne looks at the Republican Party of today in the post New York 26th election world. Given that the GOP used to pride itself on being the party of educated reality, the transformation of the party into a quasi sectarian party where ignorance is embraced has been truly amazing. The first step towards today's delusional mindset was the leaderships cynical acceptance of reality denying Christianist. The rest of the party's decline decline in recent decades traces from that cynical, short sighted decision. I have no sympathy whatsoever for today's GOP which continues to subvert the Constitution it claims to revere. Here are some column highlights:
*
When Richard Nixon won his 49-state landslide over George McGovern in 1972, Pauline Kael, the legendary New Yorker film critic, was moved to observe: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.” All of us can have our vision distorted by the special worlds we live in, and what was a problem for Kael in 1972 is now an enormous obstacle for conservative Republicans.
*
Both the leaders and rank-and-file of the Republican Party devoutly believe “the people” gave them a mandate last November to slash government, including that big-government health-care program known as Medicare.
*
More than that: They see their mandate as including an obligation to oppose any tax increases, period, even if more revenue is essential to balancing the federal budget in the long run.
*
Then came Tuesday’s thunder out of western New York. Democrat Kathy Hochul won her surprisingly comfortable special-election victory in the very Republican 26th Congressional District, largely because of the early endorsement her Republican opponent, Jane Corwin, gave to Ryan’s budget and its Medicare proposals.
*
You wonder: Will Republicans realize that this is their Pauline Kael moment? Will they understand that the anti-government cries they think they hear from “the people” are the voices of no more than 20 to 25 percent of the electorate who constitute the diehard conservative core?
*
And by the way: Hochul’s victory wasn’t just about Medicare. Her most effective ad argued that Ryan was cutting Medicare while promoting tax cuts for the wealthy. . . . Kathy Hochul says cut the deficit but do it the right way: Protect Medicare and no more tax breaks for multimillionaires.”
*
Note to timid Senate moderates who race from the battlefield even before they smell gunpowder: Hochul ran against tax cuts for the rich and won — in a district John McCain carried in 2008 by six points. Republicans might also notice that the voters’ retreat from their party is not confined to the 26th. As Washington Monthly’s always- instructive blogger Steve Benen noted, Democrats picked up formerly Republican state legislative seats in special elections this month in both Wisconsin and New Hampshire.
*
Let’s see: Voters don’t seem to like cuts to Medicare, cuts to education, or tax cuts for the rich. So what are “the people” trying to say? From the beginning, too many Republicans (and too many in the media) saw the Tea Party as a broadly based movement whose extreme anti-government views reflected the popular will.
*
This was never true. The Tea Party consisted of citizens on the right end of politics who were always there but got angrier and better organized after Obama was elected.
*
[M]iddle-of-the-roaders never bargained for what Paul Ryan — or Govs. Rick Scott, John Kasich of Ohio or Scott Walker of Wisconsin — had in mind for them. Now they’re talking back. They’re not as loud as the Tea Party. But as Hochul’s victory showed, they’re starting to be heard.