Could the GOP be Headed for Disaster in 2012?

Longer term readers know that I am less than enamored with Barack Obama for a number of reasons. That said, his would be GOP opponents are making him look better by the day. If nothing else, he appears sane and not into playing the demagogue on a daily basis. The GOP presidential debates have provided grist for night time comics and had their entertainment value in a sick sort of way, but they have not revealed anyone that looks truly presidential One has to wonder as the debates and internecine snipping continue, how much more will be done to make no Republican electable. A piece in The Daily Beast conjectures that the GOP demolition derby may be strengthening Obama's chances in 2012 as no serious adult consistent on issues emerges from the GOP fray. Here are highlights:

How can Barack Obama, as this new NBC/Marist poll has it, be beating Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney in South Carolina, of all places? The leads are narrow—it’s just 45-42 over Romney and 46-42 over Gingrich. But still, this is South Carolina, the home state of a senator (Lindsey Graham) who, just this past Sunday on Meet the Press, was talking nullification of federal laws in the shameful style that is his state’s benighted tradition.

Everyone wants sanity and civility restored to our politics. Some moderate Democrats and a smattering of Republicans have this fantasy that a centrist third party will do it. Nonsense. As I’ve written before, all a centrist third party will accomplish is ensure the election of the right-wing candidate. The only thing that might bring back sanity and civility is the destruction of the current GOP.

Nothing would say that the American people thought Republicans had vacated our planet like losing South Carolina. . . . . South Carolina Republicans surely know deep down that Gingrich is unelectable, and they find Romney unpalatable. The state’s black voters, about 30 percent of the total, have no such reservations about the Democratic candidate. And his 45 or 46 percent in the new poll suggests he’s getting some white support, too—more than he got in 2008, . . .

[N]ow let’s look at the Florida numbers from the NBC/Marist poll. There Obama is beating both Romney and Gingrich by outside the margin of error. He leads Romney 48-41 and Gingrich 51-39.

[Governors] Scott and Haley are prime examples of governors who were supposed to show a new and better way, with politics forged in the cauldron of Tea Party fervor about an absence of accountability, and so on. But these politicians have turned out to be just like all the old ones, except less competent. And if Obama holds Florida, he can afford to lose—take note of this list—Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and either Michigan or Pennsylvania, and still rack up a winning 270 electoral votes.

I am not here to say the GOP had better grow up fast. Quite the contrary. If this tantrum lasts through the election, and if 2012 is for the Republicans what 1984 was for the Democrats, then finally our polity stands a chance of functioning again. The Tea Party will be dead and buried. Grover Norquist’s vise lock on the GOP will loosen.

I'm not sure if I buy all of the spin, but I do agree that the GOP needs to be hit with a massive defeat to dis-empower the current Chrsitianist/Tea Party base of the party that is fueling the present insanity and indifference to the long best interests of the country.